The objective of this paper is to propose a universal child grant for Brazil. We will discuss the rationality behind the proposal, how best to design it, its initial operational set-up,its costs, and some of its distributive aspects. The proposed allowance is based on the unification of the...

[Introduction] Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes, including the Bolsa Família programme, have been extensively studied over recent years. The books, working papers and articles that have been written on the subject, if placed on top of each other, would pile up very high indeed. What...

Fortunately, both poverty and extreme poverty have shown a significant decrease in Brazil. According to data from the National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios - PNAD), poverty dropped over 20 per cent between 2004 and 2013, to about 9 per cent of the...

Conditional cash transfer programmes have been increasingly adopted by several lowand middle-income countries. Despite this overall acceptance, conditionalities remain under scrutiny regarding their possible independent effects on educational and health indicators. This paper is an ecological...

What are the possible impacts of social protection benefits on economic growth? Although the main objective of these benefits is to protect people from poverty, shocks and social risks - and not promote economic growth - this question pervades both the theoretical and the empirical literature on...

This text attempts to estimate the impacts of the Programa Bolsa Família on grade repetition, using matched data from the Single Registry (Cadastro Único, or CadÚnico), the Attendance Project and annual School Census. The authors use three approaches: i) comparing the results for poor...

[Introduction] The trade-off between targeting and coverage has always been something of a quandary for progressive cash transfers, particularly those that are not entitlements. Undue inclusion errors mean that families or individuals whose need is not so great are being paid at the expense of...

Social protection policy in Brazil is a historically built patchwork of programmes that pay different values to people in the same situation, leaves many unprotected (in particular, 17 million children) and is fraught with duplications and other inefficiencies. This paper proposes an approach...