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This article reviews the principal social policy initiatives of the Lula government. It focuses on social security reform for government employees; the government position concerning the Single Health Care System budget and Social Security Resources; the significance and scope of the Family Grant income transfer program and changes in labor income and the minimum wage. The article concludes that these initiatives are in keeping with the government's economic policy, which benefits financial capital. It highlights, however, that the Family Grant program has benefited a portion of the population previously excluded from government attention, removing them from absolute poverty, and that the real minimum wage has undergone a substantial increase, although it is far from that promised in Lula's 2002 campaign. The article also discusses the limitations of the Family Grant Program and the reasons that it has not been established as a right.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the nature and principal characteristics of the Lula government's social policy, revealing its close relationship with the liberal-orthodox economic policy inherited from the previous government as a 'cursed legacy', but maintained and extended by the new government. Therefore, more than reviewing all the details and dimensions of this social policy, the purpose is to analyze its content and broader political-economic meaning, considering its central and politically defining element, even in symbolic terms: the Family Grant program to combat poverty.

This essay, a political analysis, criticizes the Family Grant Program, implemented by the Lula government of 2003-2005. It is based on the ongoing analysis methodology originated in U.S. political science. It seeks to establish a parallel of these analyses with criticisms of the Family Grant program presented in the media and made by specialists. They focus on the absence of a conceptual reference for the program (or its practical non-application), supported by accumulated knowledge in the field, that would guide the social policies of the Lula government. Based on secondary sources about official data and on statements from specialists, the analysis identifies an apparent 'schizophrenia' in the 'philosophical' references that orient the government's social policies, suggesting that the solution chosen was a situational response to a demand for government marketing and not oriented to a deliberate public policy pre-conceived as such, which, if it exists, is not evident in the government actions.

The purpose of this article is to analyze three minimum income programs, transformed into law on the federal level. The first, created during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Administration, offers financial support to municipalities by creating programs to guarantee minimum income associated to social-educational activities. The second program is the Family Grant program instituted during the Lula government. The third program, drafted by Senator Eduardo Suplicy, institutes a basic citizens' income. The analysis is inserted in a broader debate related to defense of unconditional income, as a form of overcoming the social welfare state. The central argument is that Brazil, even during the Lula government, has emphasized focused policies at the cost of universal ones.

The Family Grant Program was established by the Brazilian federal government in October 2003 to fight poverty and hunger and promote innovations in government social intervention. This article analyzes the program's design and tries to identify possible inflections contained within it, based on the following focus: conditions of access, conditionalities, decentralization, intersectoral factors and social control. The study analyzed official documents and legislation, and indicates the limits and potential for their operationalization. The changes planned are highlighted by the complex effort to expand the decision-making arena, in order to incorporate different government levels and spheres as well as civil society. Limitations were noted that were created by the restrictive mechanisms for the focalization of clientele and by the lack of definition of factors related to social control and shared management. The question of conditionalities is a central problem that deserves greater study.