There are, in the brazilian marketing literature, few quantitative studies about the low-income families budget, especially that of Silva and Parente (2007). However, studies that consider a period in which the effects of rising real minimum wage, the supply of credit and social programs recently implemented by the Brazilian government on how these families allocate their budgets were not found. The goal of this dissertation was to identify patterns of low-income families from the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, from the composition of its budget in the years 2002/2003 and 2008/2009, and analyze changes found in this period. Based on data from the Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares (POF / IBGE) and using cluster analysis, were identified the same four profiles of consumption in both periods studied, which seems to confirm the heterogeneity of the low income segment . It was found that the profiles did not show sensitive changes in the interval studied, although there have been evidence of improvement of the general pattern of consumption of low-income families and their quality of life.