Long-term Societal Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers: Bolsa Família a Decade in

Abstract

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) are innovative poverty intervention programs that have been adapted and adopted in dozens of countries around the world. The effectiveness of the programs in the short-term have been established by a number of studies, but they have only recently been around long enough to begin to observe whether they indeed disrupt the inter-generational poverty cycle as claimed. The expected long-term effects are central to the appeal of CCT programs. This empirical study examines the data to determine whether there is evidence that the long-term effects are as apparent as the short-term effects in one of the original adopters, Brazil. The analysis examines municipal level government data using OLS regression and finds evidence that CCTs raised 8th grade graduation rates and lowered unemployment and birthrates. The conclusion is that, at least in Brazil, CCTs seem to be making headway in changing conditions that often lead to inter-generational poverty cycles.