Europe would love to have Brazil's 7% economic growth.
But along with this boom, Europe would have to deal with huge problems in things it takes for granted: basic education, basic sanitation, basic health and safety.
Brazil faces a legacy from the past in which these areas were never properly developed, so there's massive catching up to do, in a country with close to 200 million people, spread across an area the size of the continental US.
Already huge improvements have taken place in the last couple of decades (such as the move out of poverty for a large part of the population), but there's a long way to go before Brazil reaches a truly new level of social and economic development.
To look at one issue in particular, here's the state of Brazil's education:
1) In 2009, 20% of the population (29 million people) were functionally illiterate (their level of reading and writing is so poor that they can only perform simple tasks, such as writing their name). Many of these are already adults, a lost generation who are unlikely to receive any further education.
2) Only the top 25% of Brazilians are skilled enough in reading, writing and mathematics to be able to use them in everyday life, as we would expect in Europe.
3) The average number of years in school is currently 7.2 (compared to the normal 14+ years a European child is in school).
4) 3.6 million kids between the ages of 4 and 17 are out of school.
5) Unsurprisingly, at the top levels, there's a severe lack of qualified engineers and technically-trained people, to fulfil the demands of the rapidly growing oil and infrastructure sectors- one example of a poor education system creating a bottleneck for sustained economic growth.
6) The education system is highly inefficient, with high government spending and low returns. Each student costs the state US$ 13,000 per year (triple the cost in GDP per capita of students in OCDE countries).
7) There are huge disparities in the quality of public education, depending on the luck of the draw of which state and city you're in.
There are hundreds of NGOs in Brazil trying to improve the situation, and basic education is one of the key areas which large corporations donate to. However, this can only do so much, and the real responsibility is the government's. Education is clearly one of Brazil's biggest challenges and everyone is looking closely to see whether big changes will infact happen under the next President.
Perhaps Brazil can learn from Asia, and particularly China, when it comes to things educational.
