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The impact of Brazil's Bolsa Familia Program on school attendance, age-grade discrepancy, and child labor (de Lima et al. 2014)

Review Guidelines

 Absence of conflict of interest.

Citation

de Lima Amaral, E. F., Goncalves, G. Q., & Weiss, C. (2014). The impact of Brazil's Bolsa Familia Program on school attendance, age-grade discrepancy, and child labor. Journal of Social Science for Policy Implications, 2, 101-125

Highlights

  • The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of the Brazilian conditional cash transfer program, Bolsa Familia, on child labor and school enrollment.
  • The authors used a nonexperimental design to compare the outcomes of children ages 7 to 14 who resided in families who met the income threshold for the Bolsa Familia program compared with those who had not, based on data from the 2010 Brazilian Census.
  • The study found that receipt of the cash transfer was significantly associated with an increase in school enrollment. However, receipt of the transfer was also associated with significantly higher rates of work.
  • The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the authors did not ensure that the groups being compared were similar before the intervention. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to Bolsa Familia program; other factors are likely to have contributed.

Intervention Examined

Bolsa Familia

Features of the Intervention

Established in 2003, the Bolsa Familia program is a conditional cash transfer program aimed to increase human capital among impoverished households. Families were eligible to receive Bolsa Familia if they had monthly household per capita earnings below 70 Reais (Brazilian currency) or if they had a monthly household per capital income between 70.01 and 140 Reais and had children 17 and under residing in the household. Participating households must follow certain conditions to receive the financial benefit including attending nutritional and parental counseling sessions, getting the children vaccinated, and enrolling children in school.

Features of the Study

The authors implemented a nonexperimental design to examine whether there were differences in child labor and school enrollment between those individuals who received the Bolsa Familia benefit and those who did not. The data were drawn from the 2010 Brazilian Demographic Census, which is administered by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The study included households with children aged 7 to 14 years. The treatment and comparison groups were formed by selecting households that received the Bolsa Familia benefit for the treatment group, and selecting households that did not receive the benefit for the comparison group. This was determined by one question on the Census. It asked whether or not the household received Bolsa Familia benefits. The question also asked if households received benefits from a different program to eradicate child labor (Programa de Erradicação do Trabalho Infantil – PETI). Households with an income up to 140 Brazilian Reais were eligible for Bolsa Familia; those with an income above 140 Braziliam Reais with a child engaged in work were eligible for PETI. The authors attempted to control for this by disaggregating by household income. The authors examined these differences across three economic groups, which was determined by creating cut-offs based on the maximum threshold of per capita household income of below 1) 70 Brazilian Reais, 2) 140 Brazilian Reais, and 3) 280 Brazilian Reais. The outcomes included whether or not the child worked and whether or not the child was enrolled in school. Analyses included means tests and logistic regression with controls for household and child characteristics.

Findings

Employment/Child labor

  • Participation in Bolsa Familia was associated with significantly higher rates of work when compared to comparison group households across the three income levels. Children in households receiving the Bolsa Familia were 10 to 17 percent more likely to work compared to children in the comparison households.

Education (School participation/enrollment)

  • The study found that receipt of the Bolsa Familia benefit was significantly related to higher rates of school enrollment across the three income levels. Children in households receiving the Bolsa Familia were twice as likely to be enrolled in school compared to children in the comparison households.

Considerations for Interpreting the Findings

The study used data from the Brazilian Census to identify children who received the program. The question asked if the household received benefits from two conditional cash transfers, Bolsa Familia or PETI. Therefore, it is unclear if the Bolsa Familia program was impacting the child labor and school enrollment outcomes.

The authors used a nonexperimental design and controlled for age, gender, and mother's education in the regression models. However, the authors did not account for the outcomes at baseline, such as previous school attendance or child labor. Preexisting differences between the groups—and not the program/intervention— could explain the observed differences in outcomes.

Causal Evidence Rating

The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the authors did not ensure that the groups being compared were similar before the intervention. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the Bolsa Familia program; other factors are likely to have contributed.

Reviewed by CLEAR

December 2018

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