Brazil’s poverty, inequality and social context point to an important role for social policy. While growth is important for poverty reduction, investments in the social sectors are also crucial for deepening and sustaining welfare improvements for the poor. The Bolsa Família Program (BFP) was launched in October 2003 as President Lula’s flagship social program in support of his “Zero Hunger” initiative. Like other “conditional cash transfers” (CCTs), the BFP seeks to help: reduce current poverty and inequality, by providing cash transfers to extremely poor families; and
break the inter-generational transmission of poverty by conditioning these transfers on beneficiary compliance with requirements such as school attendance, vaccines, and pre-natal visits.
The program, which has expanded rapidly, currently covers over 8 million families (about 34 million people). The BFP aims to provide universal coverage of the poor by 2006 (an estimated 11.2 million families or about 44 million people). Since the program’s inception, the World Bank has engaged in a long-standing partnership with the Government through high-level dialogue, analytic and advisory support, and the on-going Bolsa Família Project, supported by a US$572 million loan. The project (effective since June 2005) is helping strengthen the BFP’s ability to reduce poverty by: consolidating conditional cash transfer programs and reducing gaps and duplications in coverage;
strengthening the system for identifying the target population;
developing a monitoring and evaluation system for the BFP; and
strengthening the basic institutional functioning of the program.
Although the program is relatively young, some results are already apparent, including: efficiency gains,
positive impacts on local economies,
strong targeting to the poorest,
contributions to improved education outcomes, and
impacts on children’s growth, food consumption, and diet quality.
| | |
RSS