struggling, most families’ incomes are still rising fast. Unemployment is close to record lows and pay rises are comfortably outstripping inflation, partly because of big hikes to the minimum wage, but also because of that tight jobs market. Meanwhile, the gradual weaving of a social safety-net is rescuing many Brazilians from destitution. The result is falling inequality, a growing middle class—and a disconnect between GDP growth and most Brazilians’ actual experience.

Juliana Barbassa | Latitude | International Herald Tribune

The Law of Quotas, which was signed by President Dilma Rousseff in October 2012, gives Brazil’s 59 federal universities four years to ensure that half of their incoming classes are from public schools, which generally serve poorer students. Half of those students must come from families with monthly earnings of lessthan $500 per capita. The pool of admitted students must also be representative of the racial mix in the local population.

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ICELAND

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Laurie Penny | The New Statesman

Iceland is a little human crucible bubbling away in the middle of the north Atlantic, and an experiment in how to build and run a modern democracy. For most of the past 30 years, it embraced aggressive free-market capitalism. Then its banks failed, its population lost faith in conventional politics, and it began to be an experiment in something else entirely. Desperate people across the eurozone cling to the fairy tale of Iceland as a plucky country holding out against austerity – but Icelanders see things differently. In this election, the main choice seems to be between the centre-right parties that led the