Bolsa Familia Program and school enrolment: An analysis of the 2010 Brazilian Demographic Census Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The Bolsa Famlia Program goal is to promote social development and poverty reduction, through the direct transfer of conditional cash, in association with other social programs. This study aims to analyze whether Bolsa Famlia had an association with children's school attendance, which is one of the educational conditions of the program. Our main hypothesis is that children living in households receiving Bolsa Famlia had greater chances of attending school. Data from the Ministry of Social Development and Combating Famine indicated that children living in households with Bolsa Famlia had greater school enrolment levels. By using data from the 2010 Demographic Census, collected by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), some descriptive analyzes and binary logistic regression models were performed for different thresholds of household per capita income. These estimates were made by comparing children who lived in households receiving Bolsa Famlia to those children not receiving the program. We took into consideration characteristics about the household, mothers, and children. The results were clustered by the municipality of residence of the child. In all income thresholds, children benefiting from Bolsa Famlia were more likely to be enrolled in school, compared to children not receiving the benefit.

published proceedings

  • Politica y Sociedad

author list (cited authors)

  • Amaral, E., & Gonalves, G. Q.

complete list of authors

  • Amaral, EFL||Gonçalves, GQ

publication date

  • January 2015