No previous article We discussed how the State came to operate under a near-permanent state of emergency. The conversation now is different: what happens to social protection when the institutions responsible for sustaining social life remain organized according to a reality that has already changed?
Brazilian social protection has never been fair or universal. It has been built in a fragmented way, reflecting specific social hierarchies and political pacts. Over time, it has registered real advances: it has expanded rights, incorporated millions of people, and structured income and assistance mechanisms. But it has maintained its original matrix, marked by profound inequalities: privileged regimes, disproportionate benefits, and persistent exclusion of informal workers have meant that protection has primarily reached those already integrated into the formal market or occupying protected positions – such as public servants and some special careers. Millions are still marginalized in an arrangement shaped by the political disputes and compromises of each period.
Today, public debate focuses on financial sustainability: actuarial projections, retirement rules, the impact of the minimum wage. This agenda is necessary: without sustainability, there is no viable social policy. The problem is that adjusting parameters, correcting minor distortions, and trying to prolong the viability of an institutional system designed for a society different from the current one does not seem to solve current problems, nor ensure future sustainability, and, more seriously, does not prepare us to deal with the challenges associated with changes in the life cycle, which are already visible today.
The core of social protection: caring, protecting, and integrating.
Social protection is not limited to monetary transfers. It is, or should be, the set of institutions and arrangements that support the life cycle in three fundamental dimensions: care, protection, and integration.
Look after Care means offering support when individual autonomy is reduced – in childhood, illness, disability, or old age. Care involves time, presence, services, and support networks. It's not just about income. Children need a safe environment, education, and supervision; the elderly need access to healthcare, companionship, and mobility. Monetary transfers are only part of this framework. Care is both relational and institutional.
Protect This means reducing exposure to risks that individuals cannot manage alone, such as loss of income, unemployment or work disability, and environmental disasters. Here, the financial dimension is central – but not exclusive. Protection is not just about paying a benefit; it's about organizing mechanisms that prevent a shock from turning into permanent exclusion.
To integrate It means ensuring that individuals remain connected to economic and social life over time. Social protection should not only compensate for losses, but also facilitate productive reintegration, continued education, and social participation.
These three functions have always been present, albeit unevenly. The contemporary problem is that the social foundations that supported this arrangement have changed rapidly, while the institutions responsible for organizing it have evolved much more slowly. And the public debate remains focused on minimum ages, transition rules, and calculation formulas. These are important issues, but they do not engage with the ongoing transformations and therefore do not lead to solving the problems.
Silent transformations
The imbalance does not stem from a single factor, but from the convergence of transformations that have profoundly altered the entire social protection model built over the last few decades.
The first transformation is demographic. We are living longer – that's an achievement, but longevity extends the post-retirement period, increases the demand for long-term care, and puts pressure on family networks that no longer have the same density as before. The protection systems were not prepared for this scenario and continue to be unprepared.
The second is productive. Work trajectories have become more unstable and discontinuous, alternating between formal and informal employment, multiple occupations, and irregular contributions to a system based on continuous contributions. The problem is not only financial; it is structural, insofar as the contribution base no longer corresponds to the real trajectories and needs of the beneficiaries.
The third transformation is familial and social. Smaller families, greater geographical dispersion, an increase in single-parent households, and the simultaneous aging of different generations have reduced the traditional capacity to care for children, the elderly, or the sick within the family itself. What was once cushioned by informal networks now depends more heavily on organized services, which do not appear to be being developed.
These changes do not act in isolation. They reinforce each other. Increased longevity, unstable work, and weaker family networks simultaneously increase the demand for care, strain protective mechanisms, and make lifelong integration more complex.
Nevertheless, the institutional response remains focused on the aforementioned parametric adjustments – changes to minimum ages, calculation rules, or benefit formulas. These measures may alleviate fiscal pressures, but they do not reorganize the foundations of the system in light of the ongoing transformations.
State and society facing the necessary reconstruction.
Let it be clear: the reorganization of social protection is not the exclusive task of the State, but neither can it be entirely delegated to society. In the 20th century, social protection relied on a balance between family, labor market, and the State. Families assumed a large part of daily care, work integrated individuals into the productive and social system, and the State acted – or should act – as a stabilizer, offering complementary protection against risks such as illness, old age, or unemployment.
This balance was never perfect. But there was a relatively clear division of responsibilities. Today, this division has become less functional. Smaller families are more burdened, labor markets are more unstable and less able to offer predictable career paths, and the State remains immersed in the urgencies of the present and organized around instruments designed for another social reality.
Given this scenario, two simplistic responses tend to dominate the debate. On the one hand, the expectation of an indefinite expansion of state intervention. On the other, the increasing transfer of responsibilities to families, the market, or informal networks.
None of these alternatives solves the problem. Reorganizing social protection requires a coordinated redefinition of the roles of the State and society. The State remains central in defining rules, providing essential services, and guaranteeing equity. But businesses, communities, and civil organizations also participate in the concrete production of the conditions for care, protection, and integration.
Caring for children and the elderly involves public policies, but also business arrangements, community networks, and intergenerational agreements. Protecting workers in more unstable career paths requires public instruments, but also institutional innovation in the labor market. Integrating individuals at different stages of life depends on the articulation between education, work, and social policies.
Without this coordination, adaptation tends to follow an inertial path. Families reorganize themselves as best they can, the market offers private solutions for those who can afford them, and the State adjusts parameters within structures inherited from the past. The result is greater segmentation and inequality in access to protection.
Final considerations
This text does not argue that social protection is on the verge of immediate collapse, nor does it ignore the centrality of fiscal sustainability. What it suggests is something more structural: we are undergoing a profound social transition without deliberately rebuilding the institutions responsible for sustaining it.
The system continues to function. Benefits are paid and reforms are approved, but while we administer rules designed for a different social configuration, the foundations of protection are being reorganized outside the institutional architecture that should support them.
Faced with this imbalance, private solutions are proliferating. Paid daycare centers, home care services, institutions for the elderly, and market arrangements are emerging as responses to the system's shortcomings. These are legitimate alternatives for those who can access them, but they broaden segmentation and do not solve the underlying problem: the absence of a coordinated architecture capable of organizing care and protection throughout the life cycle.
Families, in turn, face increasingly acute dilemmas – such as caring for dependent elderly people, supporting children on unstable paths, or supporting unemployed adults – in contexts of less institutional support and greater economic insecurity. The burden of the transition falls unevenly on already strained family networks.
If there is one thing that needs to be clearly addressed in the current system, it is its historically unequal nature. It has better protected those already integrated and left persistent gaps. Demographic and productive transformations tend to amplify these distortions if new institutional responses are not built, and these distortions will not be corrected with parametric adjustments or actuarial revisions.
We are not offering a menu of solutions here. The goal was to shift the conversation from accounting to reflecting on whether we are consciously rebuilding the institutional architecture that will sustain social life in the coming decades. Everything indicates that we are not.
This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Unicamp.
Cover photo:
