Read the text below entitled `Half the nation, a hundred million citizens strong´ so as to answer questions 19 to 21:
Half the nation, a hundred million citizens strong
Source: www.economist.co.uk
Sep 11th, 2008 (Adapted)
It remains hard to defi ne, and attempts to do so often seem arbitrary. But in Brazil, the middle class describes those with a job in the formal economy, access to credit and ownership of a car or motorbike. According to the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), a research institute, this means households with a monthly income ranging from 1,064 reais ($600) to 4,561 reais. Since 2002, according to FGV, the proportion of the population that fi ts this description has increased from 44% to 52%. Brazil, previously notorious for its extremes, is now a middle–class country.
This social climbing is a feature mainly of the country´s cities, reversing two decades of stagnation that began at the start of the 1980s. Marcelo Neri of FGV suggests two factors behind the change. The fi rst is education. The quality of teaching in Brazil´s schools may still be poor, but those aged 15–21 now spend on average just over three more years studying than their counterparts did in the early 1990s.
The second is a migration of jobs from the informal "black" economy to the formal economy. The rate of formal job creation is accelerating, with 40% more created in the year to this July than in the previous 12 months, which itself set a record. Together with cash transfers to poor families, this helps to explain why ? in contrast with economic and social development in India or China ? as Brazil´s middle class has grown, so the country´s income inequality has lessened.