Conditional Cash Transfers, Schooling, and Child Labor : Micro-Simulating Brazil's Bolsa Escola Program
A growing number of developing economies are providing cash transfers to poor people that require certain behaviors on their part, such as attending school or regularly visiting health care facilities. A simple ex ante methodology is proposed for evaluating such programs and used to assess the bolsa escola program in Brazil. The results suggest that about 60 percent of poor 10- to 15-year-olds not in school enroll in response to the program. The program reduces the incidence of poverty by only a little more than one percentage point, however, and the Gini coefficient falls just half a point. Results are better for measures more sensitive to the bottom of the distribution, but the effect is never large.
Summary: | A growing number of developing economies
are providing cash transfers to poor people that require
certain behaviors on their part, such as attending school or
regularly visiting health care facilities. A simple ex ante
methodology is proposed for evaluating such programs and
used to assess the bolsa escola program in Brazil. The
results suggest that about 60 percent of poor 10- to
15-year-olds not in school enroll in response to the
program. The program reduces the incidence of poverty by
only a little more than one percentage point, however, and
the Gini coefficient falls just half a point. Results are
better for measures more sensitive to the bottom of the
distribution, but the effect is never large. |
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