Financing of social assistance policy: advances and perspectives

Abstract

This article aims to give an overview of the financing of social assistance policy, presenting the normative changes, the budget contribution, and the perspectives. As a methodology, it was accessed the survey of the normative production of the policy management body, which can be requested from the authors, and the descriptive analysis of the data extracted from the Federal Budget Panel of the current Ministry of Economy, which come from the Integrated System of Financial Administration of the Federal Government (SIAFI), system that performs all the budgetary and financial execution of the federal government. The results point to changes, based on the guidelines of the National Social Assistance Policy (PNAS) and the Basic Operational Standard (NOBs / SUAS), which provided a new standard of financing, with a broader institutional and territorial scope and expansion of the policy’s protective scope. The budget line went up from 0.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006 to 1.3% in 2018. The outlook, however, is not encouraging, considering the scenario of freezing the Union’s primary expenditure in real terms and strengthening the concept of social assistance as charity and benevolence.