2026 - Edition 94 | April 07

Diagram and reports detail the functioning of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS)

Hello Leitor,

IMDS has dedicated efforts to understand the factors that drive or restrict social mobility in Brazil, producing empirical evidence on the trajectories of individuals and families over time. An important part of this agenda has focused on the analysis of beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program, whose centrality in the country's social protection structure is widely recognized.

The motivation for the work we present here derives directly from this body of evidence. Recent IMDS studies, which began in 2023 and expanded in 2025, followed the trajectory of millions of children and adolescents who were dependent on the program in 2005, revealing complex mobility patterns. The results show that, although a significant portion of these young people have disengaged from social assistance and experienced insertion in the labor market, their trajectories remain marked by instability and an often intermittent relationship with the protection network. These findings reinforce the importance of understanding, in a more comprehensive way, the functioning of Social Assistance in Brazil as a social protection system aimed at preventing and coping with risks and vulnerabilities, and which also seeks to promote the autonomy of families, thus articulating interventions of a punctual nature, aimed at meeting immediate demands, with actions of a continuous nature — responsible for ensuring permanent responses to essential needs.

It is in this context that the research project of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS), developed by IMDS and already mentioned in previous Letters, is inserted. Based on the study of normative documents — such as laws, decrees, ordinances, resolutions and technical guidelines — and interviews with participants involved in the formulation and implementation of the policy, this effort seeks to offer a structured reading of Social Assistance in Brazil.

As one of the first results of this work, IMDS is now launching a series of three reports that offer a structured view of the policy, organized around three central axes or dimensions: the organization, the management, and the financing of the SUAS. The elaboration of this series is based on the recognition that, despite the existence of a broad normative framework, there was still a gap in the systematization, in an accessible and integrated way, of its main elements. The reports, in this sense, seek to answer in a clear and systematic way the central questions: what is Social Assistance in Brazil and how does it work?

The reports interact with a synthetic diagram, available on a specific dedicated page on the IMDS portal, which organizes Social Assistance into its three axes and translates, in a visual way, its main flows and instruments. While the diagram offers an integrated and immediate view of the policy, the reports deepen the analysis, detailing the normative and institutional framework that underpins each of these components. Together, these materials support a comprehensive understanding of SUAS, combining visual clarity and analytical depth.

The first report, dedicated to the organization of the SUAS, presents the institutional foundations of the policy, its principles, guidelines and the way in which its levels of protection are structured. It is based on a discussion of what characterizes Social Assistance as a public policy of the State, as established by the 1988 Constitution and by the Organic Law of Social Assistance (LOAS), and advances in the analysis of the organization of offers within the territory, with emphasis on the services, programs, benefits and units that make up the system, especially in the scope of Basic Social Protection.

The second report addresses the management of the system, detailing the federative arrangements, the coordination mechanisms between the entities and the instruments of planning, monitoring and management of the work. The third report focuses on the financing of the policy, examining federal co-financing mechanisms, the rules for the execution of resources, as well as the co-financing floors of Basic Social Protection.

By advancing this agenda, IMDS reaffirms its commitment to the production of applied knowledge and to the strengthening of public policies capable of promoting social protection and expanding mobility opportunities in Brazil.

We invite readers to access the reports and the diagram on this new IMDS page and to follow the next developments of this work.

See you in the next "IMDS Letter"!

Paulo Tafner

CEO