This text argues that the criteria used to define Bolsa Família benefits and the criteria used to establish coverage targets are inconsistent. While individual concession criteria are that beneficiaries should be paid for two years if they do not suffer large upward income mobility, the...

This article estimates the market value of public education by comparing standardized test scores of students in public and private schools. The idea is to assign to the education of each public school student a market value equivalent to the tuition paid by private school students with similar...

Owner-occupied housing and public infrastructure services are a relevant part of the income distribution whose impacts have not yet been adequately studied, at least not from the distributive point of view. This paper suggests a way to find the market value for these services using hedonic...

Publicly provided education is both an important public expenditure and a relevant in-kind transfer, often to the poorest households. This paper compares three methods to value education services and their distributive impact. The methods are: i) The first method is cost of provision, according...

This article uses recently released data from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua (PNAD Contínua), Brazilian household survey to calculate changes in inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient from 2016 to 2017. A Shorrocks decomposition by factor components is also...

This discussion paper presents a methodology to visualize the effects of various influences on the income distribution. The methodology, although not new, has become very popular in the past few years. It is the method of counterfactual simulations. In other words, it is the use of "what if...

This text decomposes the earnings differential between white men, on the one hand, and black men, white women, and black women, on the other. A difference in earnings may arise due to at least three causes: difference in human capital, different insertions in the labor market, or pure difference...

Any discussion on professional training and labor market insertion must take into account the social vulnerability of the Brazilian population. Close to 16 million families fall within the criteria of Bolsa Familia`s Single Registry. Seventy-two (72) million people live in these families, but...

This text discusses the Bolsa Família Program, its institutional design, implementation issues, its impacts and possibilities for future evolution. We discuss the institutional division of responsibilities, benefits, conditionalities and federative arrangements. With regards to implementation...