Class C already buys more household appliances than A and B
Folha de S. Paulo
Class C has become the main consumer of electronics and household appliances and beat the families of classes A and B in the years of the Lula government. The so-called "new middle class" should end 2010 with 45% of the slice of spending of those products in the country, while the richer represented 37%. "That part of the population benefited from the growth of the formal employment and the strong growth of the credit. Because of those factors, the expansion of consumption that occurred in all classes, was more intense in that category", says Renato Meirelles, Managing Director of the Data Popular institute.
The data are part of the institute's study ordered by Folha and conducted from data of the POF (Family Budget Survey) of the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) in the 2002-2010 period. According to the survey, in the beginning of the Lula government, the top of the pyramid represented 55% of the consumption of such goods; as regards class C, it had 27% of participation. Classes D and E remained stable in the period, with 18% of participation.
Another factor that explains the potential is its size. With 94.9 million people, the Brazilian middle class represents 50.5% of the population, and classes A and B, 10.5%, according to a study made by the FGV (Getúlio Vargas Foundation), based on the data of the 2009 Pnad (National Household Sample Survey). "The per capita expenditure of class C is lesser than that of the superior classes, but their weight is greater for it is more voluminous", says the Chief Economist of the Center of Social Policies of FGV, Marcelo Neri. This year, the Brazilian families will spend R$ 45 billion (US$ 26.5 billion) with electronics and household appliances, according to Data Popular. R$ 20.1 billion (US$ 11.8 billion) of the total will come from class C, R$ 16.7 billion (US$ 9.8 billion) from classes A and B and R$ 8.2 billion (US$ 4.8 billion) from classes D and E.
Among consumer goods, the computer was the one that presented greater growth in the Brazilian households - it went from 14% of the homes in 2002 to 34% in 2009. "Part of that class C is made up of people who moved, socially, from a lower class, who did not have a computer or a plasma TV and started consuming those products", says Neri. In the middle class, the evolution was even more intense. In 2002, only 13 in every 100 households had a PC. In 2009, they were 52%.
In the opinion of Professor of the Provar (Retail Management Program) of the FIA (Administration Institute Foundation), Elaine Brito, the class D will be the next to ascend strongly and it should have a stronger evolution in consumption in the next years. "They will leave the basic consumption to make dreams come true".