The following article was published in O Globo on December the 20th 2004.
The municipality of Rio de Janeiro has 1,092,476 persons living in favelas, according to the figures of the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica (IBGE) and the Instituto Pereira Parros (IPP). They form 18.9% of the population.

Because the houses in the favelas are usually build on invaded land, their owners don?t have title of ownership. Therefore it is difficult to sell their property. And in general they just manage to do so at prices below the market price.

A projection of the Instituto de Estudos de Trabalho e Sociedade (IETS) show that within five years Rio will have about 1.3 million favela dwellers. An increase of 210,000 compared with 2000. This rise corresponds to almost four Rocinhas, where according to official figures are living 56 thousand people. In 2010 acording to the IETS, favelas will harbour 21.1% of the Rio population.

The figures of the IBGE show that in the last decades the number of people living in favelas in Rio has increased considerably. In 1980 there were 637,518. Twenty years later there were already 1,092,476, a rise of 71.3%.

When the growth in the favelas is compared with the other areas in the city, the increase is even more significant. According to the IPP the population in the favelas increased six times more than the population of the asphalt (i.e. rest of the city with paved roads) between 1991 and 2000. The increase is also higher than the average for Brazil, where favelas grow four times quicker.