INNOVA Research Journal 2016. Vol. 1, No.3 pp. 5-12
Introduction
Despite having the fifth largest economy in the world, a significant percentage of the
population of Brazil is considered to be poor or indigent. In 2004, 41.4% of the population fell
into these classes and had access to less than half the minimum wage (Reiter, 2009). This is
indicative of the high rate of inequality experienced by the people in the country. In Brazil, the
most prosperous quintile of the population earns almost two-thirds of the country’s personal
income, while the poorest quintile earns a mere 2.3 percent; this makes Brazil the country with
the seventh most inequitable distribution of income in the world (Hall, 2008).
These financial inequalities correlate to inequalities in education; for example, only
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9.5% of the country’s population has completed secondary education (Human
Development Report, 2013). Inequalities such as this are important to note because, especially in
South America, “disparities in educational attainment continue to be sharp at those levels that
currently matter most to employers for access to the better-paid jobs” (Reimers, 2000, p. 433).
Such disparities need to be addressed in order to break the cycle of poverty in the poorest sectors
of
Brazil. One program that has attempted to lessen inequalities in the country is the Bolsa
Familia conditional transfer program, which started in 2003. Over 13 million people have
enrolled in this program, which provides financial aid to Brazilian families in poverty under the
condition that they send their children to school. The purpose of this paper is to describe the
characteristics of the program, evaluate its achievements in order to understand its effects with
regard to education inequality, examine the criticism that the program has received, and finally
explore some ways in which the program can be improved.
Description of Bolsa Familia
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, such as Bolsa Familia, have become widely
employed by governments in Latin America because they are easy to target at families that meet
certain geographical and household level criteria, and it is more cost-effective to provide cash
directly to families than to use a benefit system such as food stamps or vouchers (Hall, 2006).
Additionally, these programs focus on the intersecting components of health, education,
and nutrition, which all work together to strengthen human capital (Hall, 2008). CCT programs
are also more flexible than other social welfare programs, and have been found to be “efficient
and transparent in their implementations, focused on the future with a clear set of goals
(Rawlings &Rubio, 2005, p. 6). Bolsa Familia is now the largest CCT program in the world, and
it is divided into four smaller programs, which are educational stipends to boost school
attendance, maternal nutrition, food supplements, and a domestic gas subsidy (Hall, 2006). As
shown in Figure 1, the number of families served by the program nearly doubled between the
years of 2004 and 2010, and the amount of money (shown in Brazilian Real) donated to these
families more than quadrupled over the same time period.
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