How to Fix Brazil

Brazil has rarely had it so bad. The country’s economy has collapsed: since 2013, its un-employment rate has nearly doubled, to more than 11 percent, and last year its GDP shrank by 3.8 per-cent, the largest contraction in a quarter century. Petrobras, Brazil’s semipublic oil giant, has lost around 85 percent of its value since 2008, thanks to declining commodity prices and its role in a massive corruption scandal. The Zika virus has infected thousands of Brazilians, exposing the frailty of the country’s health system. And despite the billions of dollars Brasília poured into the 2014 World Cup and this year’s Olympic Games, those events have done little to improve the national mood or upgrade the country’s urban infrastructure. Meanwhile, many of Brazil’s long-standing problems have proved stubbornly persistent: half of all Brazilians still lack access to basic sanitation, 35 million of them lack access to clean water, and in 2014, the country suffered nearly 60,000 homicides.

"How to Fix Brazil" is from the September/October 2016 issue of Foreign Affairs.

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