Rio’s “social score” in the lead-up to the Olympic Games
The awarding of the 2016 Games to Rio de Janeiro accelerated several public policies and private projects that resulted in significant improvements for the city and its people. Access to basic services, unemployment rates, incomes and other issues relating to the city’s quality of life were improved, according to several studies on the economic and social impact of the Games.
A study by FGV Social, part of Rio-based higher education institution and think tank Fundação Getulio Vargas, analysed public services, housing, transport, education, labour, digital inclusion and social development. It concluded that Rio’s “social score” was trending downwards until the city was awarded the 2016 Olympic Games, and that this trend was reversed in the years following the announcement.
Thirty-six of the 38 indicators analysed in the study registered improvements in the period from 2008, the year before Rio was selected as the host city for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, to 2016. These improvements included better access to basic services, more children attending school and higher incomes.
For the 24 indicators where previous data was available, the study showed that nearly half had regressed from 1992 to 2008, and that all but one then showed improvement in the pre-Games period from 2008 to 2016.
Other studies support the notion that the Games provided significant economic benefits to Rio. For example, an independent 2018 study by Brazil’s Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) showed that the city’s gross domestic product would have been 7.5 per cent lower had it not hosted the Games, and that the income of Rio’s poorest 5 per cent of people grew by nearly 30 per cent in the pre-Olympic period (2012-2015) compared with growth of less than 20 per cent for the city’s richest 5 per cent, in contrast to the trend observed in other Brazilian cities.
A 2017 IPEA study noted that, while unemployment increased nationwide from 2012 to 2015 as a result of a recession, growing economic activity in Rio ahead of the Games meant that the city’s unemployment rate was halved during the same period.
More recently, Rio de Janeiro’s City Hall, in collaboration with its Data Office, developed an online tool on “What would Rio de Janeiro be without the Olympics?”, which traces the transformations in infrastructure, services, transport and education across Rio thanks to the Olympic Games.