Benefício de Prestação Continuada e proteção social : uma análise do perfil socioeconômico da população sergipana assistida no período de 2004 a 2025

Abstract

This undergraduate final paper presents the results of a study whose object was the evolution of the Continuous Cash Benefit (Benefício de Prestação Continuada – BPC) and the socioeconomic profile of the population of Sergipe assisted by this benefit between 2004 and 2025. The general objective of the study was to analyze how the crisis of capital, neoliberalism, and socio-historical particularities materialize in the profile of the population that accesses this right in the state of Sergipe. It sought to understand whether the expansion of the benefit — historically marked by the successive counter-reforms of the Brazilian State, by the mass benefit review program instituted in 2019, and by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operation of the social security system — affects the population of Sergipe unevenly. The investigation was exploratory in nature, drawing on bibliographic and documentary sources and on qualitative and quantitative approaches, grounded in historicaldialectical materialism. The bibliographic research was carried out through theses, dissertations, articles, and books that discuss the crisis of capital, the advance of neoliberalism, and social assistance policy. The documentary research drew on the benefit's administrative databases made available by the Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, complemented by information from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics and other government agencies. All data collected refer to periods ranging from 2004 to 2025. The results show the accelerated expansion of the benefit in the state, revealing a profile of beneficiaries who are predominantly Black, enrolled in the Single Registry (Cadastro Único), and belonging to families living in extreme poverty, marked by the feminization of unprotected old age and by the growing judicialization of access for people with disabilities, which expresses both the advancement of a social right and the deepening of the expressions of the social question.