SDG 1 – No poverty

• Target 1.1 – By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.
  • Indicator 1.1.1 – Proportion of the population living below the international poverty line by sex, age, employment status and geographical location (urban/rural)
• Target 1.2 – By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.
  • Indicator 1.2.1 – Proportion of population living below the national poverty line, by sex and age
  • Indicator 1.2.2 – Proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions
• Target 1.3 – Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable
  • Indicator 1.3.1 – Proportion of population covered by social protection floors/systems, by sex, distinguishing children, unemployed persons, older persons, persons with disabilities, pregnant women, newborns, work-injury victims and the poor and the vulnerable

SDG 2 – Zero hunger

• Target 2.1 – By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round
  • Indicator 2.1.1 – Prevalence of undernourishment
  • Indicator 2.1.2 – Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population, based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)
• Target 2.2 – By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons
  • Indicator 2.2.1 – Prevalence of stunting (height for age <-2 standard deviation from the median of the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age
  • Indicator 2.2.2 – Prevalence of malnutrition (weight for height >+2 or <-2 standard deviation from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age, by type (wasting and overweight)
  • Indicator 2.2.3 – Prevalence of anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years, by pregnancy status (percentage)

SDG 4 – Quality education

• Target 4.1 – By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes
  • Indicator 4.1.1 – Proportion of children and young people (a) in grades 2/3; (b) at the end of primary; and (c) at the end of lower secondary achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in (i) reading and (ii) mathematics, by sex
  • Indicator 4.1.2 – Completion rate (primary education, lower secondary education, upper secondary education)
• Target 4.2 – By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education
  • Indicator 4.2.1 – Proportion of children aged 24–59 months who are developmentally on track in health, learning and psychosocial well-being, by sex
  • Indicator 4.2.2 – Participation rate in organized learning (one year before the official primary entry age), by sex
• Target 4.3 – By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university
  • Indicator 4.3.1 – Participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months, by sex

• Target 4.4 – By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
  • Indicator 4.4.1 – Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill

• Target 4.5 – By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations
  • Indicator 4.5.1 – Parity indices (female/male, rural/urban, bottom/top wealth quintile and others such as disability status, indigenous peoples and conflict-affected, as data become available) for all education indicators on this list that can be disaggregated

SDG 5 – Gender equality

• Target 5.1 – End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
  • Indicator 5.1.1 – Whether or not legal frameworks are in place to promote, enforce and monitor equality and non‑discrimination on the basis of sex
• Target 5.2 – Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
  • Indicator 5.2.1 – Proportion of ever-partnered women and girls aged 15 years and older subjected to physical, sexual or psychological violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months, by form of violence and by age
  • Indicator 5.2.2 – Proportion of women and girls aged 15 years and older subjected to sexual violence by persons other than an intimate partner in the previous 12 months, by age and place of occurrence
• Target 5.4 – Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate
  • Indicator 5.4.1 – Proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work, by sex, age and location
• Target 5.5 – Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences
  • Indicator 5.5.1 – Proportion of seats held by women in (a) national parliaments and (b) local governments
  • Indicator 5.5.2 – Proportion of women in managerial positions

SDG 8 – Decent work and economic growth

• Target 8.5 – By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
  • Indicator 8.5.1 – Average hourly earnings of female and male employees, by occupation, age and persons with disabilities
  • Indicator 8.5.2 – Unemployment rate, by sex, age and persons with disabilities

• Target 8.6 – By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training
  • Indicator 8.6.1 – Proportion of youth (aged 15-24 years) not in education, employment or training
• Target 8.7 – Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms
  • Indicator 8.6.2 – Proportion and number of children aged 5‑17 years engaged in child labour, by sex and age

SDG 10 – Reduced inequalities

• Target 10.2 – By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status
  • Indicator 10.2.1 – Proportion of people living below 50 per cent of median income, by sex, age and persons with disabilities

SDG 16 – Peace, justice and strong institutions

• Target 16.1 – Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere
  • Indicator 16.1.1 – Number of victims of intentional homicide per 100,000 population, by sex and age
  • Indicator 16.1.2 – Conflict-related deaths per 100,000 population, by sex, age and cause
  • Indicator 16.1.3 – Proportion of population subjected to (a) physical violence, (b) psychological violence and/or (c) sexual violence in the previous 12 months
  • Indicator 16.1.4 – Proportion of population that feel safe walking alone around the area they live after dark
• Target 16.2 – End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children
  • Indicator 16.2.1 – Proportion of children aged 1–17 years who experienced any physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers in the past month
  • Indicator 16.2.2 – Number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age and form of exploitation
  • Indicator 16.2.3 – Proportion of young women and men aged 18–29 years who experienced sexual violence by age 18
• Target 16.3 – Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all
  • Indicator 16.3.1 – Proportion of victims of (a) physical, (b) psychological and/or (c) sexual violence in the previous 12 months who reported their victimization to competent authorities or other officially recognized conflict resolution mechanisms
  • Indicator 16.3.2 – Unsentenced detainees as a proportion of overall prison population
  • Indicator 16.3.3 – Proportion of the population who have experienced a dispute in the past two years and who accessed a formal or informal dispute resolution mechanism, by type of mechanism

SDG 17 – Partnerships for the goals

• Target 17.14 – Enhance policy coherence for sustainable development
  • Indicator 17.14.1 – Number of countries with mechanisms in place to enhance policy coherence of sustainable development

The Social Assistance Reference Center (Centro de Referência de Assistência Social, CRAS, in Portuguese) is a decentralized public Social Assistance policy facility, responsible for organizing the provision of services, benefits and cash transfers in territories with high concentration of poverty and social vulnerability.  

• Brazil has more than 8,700 CRAS, with a nearly universal presence throughout the country (CRAS has coverage in 99.7% of all 5.570 municipalities). As such, CRAS is the main service facility of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS) and represents the main entry point to this system for families in situations of poverty.
• It is through CRAS that these families are registered in the Single Registry, which in turn systematize information on low-income families and enables these families to access a number of social services, benefits and programmes, including cash transfer programs such as the Bolsa Familia Programme (PBF) and the Continuous Cash Benefit (BPC) as well as other public policies. CRAS thus plays a key role in promoting and enabling an intersectoral approach to policy implementation through the integration of multiple services of SUAS and other sectors.
• The services provided by CRAS are based on the premise that multidimensional poverty requires an integrated response that combines benefits with programmes and services. CRAS therefore seeks to ensure social rights are fulfilled by facilitating access of vulnerable families and individuals to essential social benefits and services with the aim to improve life quality, family and community relationships, social inclusion and participation, and empowerment.
• The social work with families that CRAS provides has a preventive nature, aiming to mitigate social risks and avoid the worsening of social vulnerabilities. It involves individualized and collective care, preventive monitoring, workshops, community activities and referrals to other services and public policies. The work with families is operationalized through the Integral Family Protection and Support Service (PAIF), which is the main social assistance service provided by CRAS.
• One of the main priorities of CRAS is to monitor beneficiaries of BPC and Bolsa Familia, especially those in non-compliance with conditionalities.
• CRAS also has an important role for the coordination of different programmes, such as the BPC at School Program, an intersectoral and decentralized program, implemented by municipalities, that identifies children and adolescents benefiting from the BPC in the territories and develops actions to support their access to and retention in School.
• Furthermore, CRAS makes referrals to the Early Childhood Programme, as implemented within the scope of SUAS. This programme provides home visits to promote early childhood development through support and guidance for the family. The programme is directly linked to CRAS, which refers families to the social assistance network. The priority target audience of the programme consists of children that benefit from the BPC and Bolsa Familia as well as families included in the Single Registry.
• CRAS also operates its services through complementary mobile itinerary teams that facilitate access to services of vulnerable populations living in isolated and difficult-to-access territories, such as rural populations and riverside communities as well as indigenous and traditional people. Through the usage of boats and other vehicles itinerary teams of CRAS ensure that essential social assistance services reach these people in the locations where they live.
• In addition, CRAS plays an important role in situations of emergency and public calamity in the sense of coordinating with other public policies to support affected families. More specifically, CRAS provides initial supportive care, active listening and referrals to temporary shelters, health care services as well as to facilities where food and water is provided. In an emergency CRAS can also provide temporary benefits. These benefit (referred to in Brazil as Eventual Benefits) are provided for a limited period to address and manage temporary vulnerabilities (such as food insecurity) related to births, deaths and disasters and can consist in cash, vouchers, or food baskets.

The services offered by CRAS and those provided by other facilities that operate within Brazil’s Unified Social Assistance System complement each other in the sense of attending to different degrees of social vulnerability. In this context, CRAS serve a bridge to more specialized services, contributing to an integrated approach of social assistance.

The existence of a good balance between individualized services and those of a community nature creates an environment where specific challenges can be addressed, while also fostering important community bonds that are essential for overcoming situations of social vulnerability and rights violations.

Typically, the nationally typified services offered by CRAS are guided by parameters that prioritize specific vulnerabilities and rights violations faced by women and children. As a result, a significant number of these individuals benefit from these initiatives.

CRAS is a national reference for inclusion of vulnerable people in the Single Registry and the Bolsa Familia Programme. The integration between these elements creates a virtuous cycle of complementarity that leads way for results at scale. As of today, the Single Registry gathers information on around 47.5% of the Brazilian population, while the Bolsa Familia programme has more than 55 million beneficiaries.

The integration of cash transfers and social assistance services has in Brazil been adopted as a premise for tackling multidimensional poverty. Thus, in addition to programmes such as Bolsa Familia and the BPC, Brazil has a social assistance network that operates at national scale, offering assistance to populations living situations of poverty. CRAS has a key coordinating role within this network and in ensuring that the benefits, services and programmes reach those most in need.

In order to facilitate access for the population to social services and benefits, CRAS is implemented in a decentralized manner at municipal level, with focus on territories with the highest concentration of poverty. The shared management model adopted in Social Assistance, with responsibilities from different spheres – including co-financing – and the commitment of municipalities to implementing CRAS in Brazil have proven to be fundamental success factors, fostering collaboration between the federal government and all Brazilian municipalities. This has led to a decline in fragmentation of the social protection system provided by subnational governments, with a decrease in overlaps with programmes that are implemented by the federal government. This scenario enables municipalities to allocate their budgets towards alternative programmes and services that complement federal programmes. Additionally, SUAS has successfully preserved the autonomy of local governments in delivering social assistance services, while conforming to its national typification, setting minimum wage thresholds, and implementing parameters that have mitigated national disparities in the implementation of associated public policies.

In terms of networking and intersectoral coordination, CRAS has a central role at local level for the coordination, follow up and management of social assistance services provided to families in situations of social vulnerability.

Points of attention:

Considering the Brazilian geographic dimensions of Brazil as well as the increase in demand in recent years, there is a need to expand the national coverage of CRAS facilities.

Considering also the demographic diversity of the country, Brazil needs to further develop specific methodologies and strategies that adequately attend to the specific demands and characteristics of specific groups, with emphasis on indigenous families and communities as well as traditional people.

Social registry; Conditional cash transfer (CCT); Social pension; Social care services

• National Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA)
• National School of Public Administration (ENAP)
• Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Fight Against Hunger (MDS)

CRAS and the Unified Social Assistance System at large are governed by public authorities, with shared responsibilities across the different spheres of the federation (Federal, State and Municipal). The federal government has the responsibility to develop national parameters, while the municipalities are responsible for implementation. The different spheres of the federation are responsible for co-financing the maintenance of CRAS and its respective services.

CRAS is implemented in a decentralized manner, at municipal level, targeting the most vulnerable territories. Coverage design and federal funding are based on criteria defined based on poverty data collected through the Single Registry. Following national parameters, municipalities implement and adapt services to local realities and the specificities of given target populations and their respective needs.

The national criteria and parameters that guide the implementation and fund allocations are defined in national participatory forums such as the Tripartite Inter-managers Commission and the National Social Assistance Council. This model ensures convergence between national parameters and the different local realities of the country while allowing for joint and transparent definitions of budgetary priorities.

It is worth noting as well that the model of Social Assistance Councils exists at all three levels (National, State and Municipal). They all have an impact on matters like the delineation of strategies, objectives, and yearly milestones for the social assistance sector. Furthermore, there must be equal split of 50% between government and civil society representatives in these councils.

• There are currently 8,716 CRAS operating throughout Brazil’s 5,570 municipalities, which represent 99.7% of the total. These units are in territories where around 25.6 million families live in situations of poverty.
• The increase in hunger and poverty that followed the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in demand for the services provided by CRAS. In 2023, National Secretariat of Social Assistance (SNAS) estimated a deficit of around 1,400 CRAS in the country.

In 2023, CRAS provided 41 million individualized services through PAIF and more than 3 million home visits. On average, more than 1.2 million families were monitored monthly through PAIF during 2023. Furthermore, more than 285 thousand families regularly participated in PAIF group activities PAIF in 2023. Sources: CadSUAS March/24; RMA* 2023.

• The current total amount required for federal co-financing for the maintenance of CRAS is R$739.2 million per year (around 148 million dollars/year). The increase in demand for attendance at CRAS in recent years requires a gradual increase in the allocation of public resources. It is important to mention that these data refer to federal co-financing. States and municipalities are also responsible for allocating resources from their budgets to finance CRAS.
• Human resources stand for the main cost of CRAS. The monthly expenditures of CRAS vary depending on the population size of the municipality – from approximately R$17 thousand/month, for municipalities with less than 20 thousand inhabitants, to around R$77 thousand/month for large urban centres.

• RMA – Monthly Service Record: a federal government system that tracks attendance at social assistance services offered by CRAS and other facilities of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS) in all Brazilian municipalities. This information makes it possible to measure and quantify the services offered by the social assistance network in terms of type, volume, and quality standards. RMA data thus enables the social assistance monitoring sector to oversee service provision at the municipal and state levels record system of services provided monthly by CRAS throughout the national territory;
• SUAS CRAS Census: tool that annually collects detailed information about CRAS (operation, physical structure, team and service provided);
• CadSUAS – Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS) National Registry: registry of SUAS units and professionals, systematically updated;
• SUAS Electronic Medical Record: record of information related to the care of each family, integrated with the Single Registry to better identify the profile and vulnerabilities of each family;
• Single Registry: registry of information on Brazilian families in situations of poverty and extreme poverty. It is used as a source of information for the implementation of CRAS.

– Social Assistance Reference Center (CRAS) – Blog SUAS Net – CRAS / PAIF- Social Information Report – Relatório de Programas e Ações