From regulation to budget: the (in)effectiveness of comprehensive protection for the elderly in RS from the perspective of public management and existentialism

Abstract

Population aging in Rio Grande do Sul demands effective public policies, guaranteed by Brazilian legislation, especially the 1988 Federal Constitution and the Statute of the Elderly. The objective of this work is to analyze the (in)effectiveness of comprehensive protection for the elderly in the state, confronting the normative plan with the reality of budget execution from the perspective of public management and existentialist philosophy. The relevance of the research lies in the understanding that the scarcity of financial resources compromises the dignity and freedom of the elderly. The methodology adopted is qualitative, bibliographic, and documentary research, with analysis of budgetary data from the Rio Grande do Sul Transparency Portal and theoretical references from authors such as Sartre (1943) and Beauvoir (1970). The results reveal a critical mismatch between planning and actual execution: in the 2024-2027 Multi-Year Plan (PPA), 76.4% of the resources allocated to active aging are absorbed by current expenses, limiting real investments in new facilities. Furthermore, a gap of R$ 28 million was identified between the amounts committed and actually paid in the Citizenship Rights function in 2026. It is concluded that this financial inefficiency characterizes an “institutional bad faith,” which reduces the elderly to their mere reality and compromises their existential dignity. State omission functions as an anticipation of social death, maintaining full protection mostly in the realm of legal abstraction and denying the elderly the possibility of projecting themselves as free subjects.