Benefits of the Bolsa Família: recipients watch the president on television. The scheme also encourages school attendance

Geová da Silva Lima lives with his wife and three children in two small rooms with bare brick walls in a rough, crime-ridden area of Recife, in northeast Brazil. The living room has a battered television and a stove. There is a bathroom but no running water.

After a series of short-lived jobs, he has had no fixed work for well over a year. But the government’s family grant programme, Bolsa Família, a scheme that in the past five years has helped to lift millions of Brazilians out of the most extreme poverty, now provides a small regular income.