A life in Brazil
Public university costs nothing and is hard to get into; public medicine is free and slow. Family is a financial institution.
In One Life, a Brazilian life is born in Recife, Curitiba, Belém, Goiânia, Santos or Porto Alegre. Children go to school in the school van. The money is in reais, and pay is a fraction of what the same work earns in the United States, as are many prices.
What the game gives you
School in Brazil builds towards the ENEM, the national exam that decides who gets into university. Public universities in Brazil cost nothing and are among the best in the country, which makes the exam one of the most important moments of a Brazilian childhood in the game.
Medicine is a two-track system. The public health system is free and, for many things, slow; private care is faster and costs money. The game prices illness in between: a Brazilian life pays more of its medical costs than a European one, and much less than an Indian or Nigerian one.
Family matters to the money as well as the heart. In a Brazilian life, relatives lend, borrow, house and help each other far more than in the US or Germany, and the game plays family as a source of both support and obligation.
Money in the game
The game sets each country’s money against the United States, then shows it in local currency, here in reais at a fixed rate of R$5 to the dollar. In a life here, an ordinary job pays about 25% of what the same job pays in the US, and everyday prices are about 36% of American prices. A university education costs about 28% of the American price, and medical bills about 55% of what an American pays out of pocket for the same illness.
Those ratios are the shape of a life here. Pay is about a quarter of the American figure and prices about a third, so the same work buys less. Illness costs about half what it does in the US, which is a great deal against Brazilian pay.
The odds
The UN estimates life expectancy at birth in Brazil at about 76 years (73 for men, 79 for women). The gap between men and women is one of the largest of the eight, partly because violence and road deaths fall heavily on young men. In the game, a Brazilian life has wide room to rise through education, and less to fall back on if it does not.