Bolsa Familia Program: a case study of Brazil’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program and its concepts of poverty

Abstract

Poverty has been considered the worst and most widespread human rights violation in the 20th century affecting millions of people. Many authors have tried to define poverty and several theories were created to conceptualize it. Despite sharing similar aspects, these theoretical streams do not form one single coherent theory of poverty. Rather they add to a complex multidimensional perspective of poverty. Concurrently, numerous public policies and programs have been developed to address and reduce poverty, some more successful than others. For many decades Brazil has struggled with problems of structural inequality and poverty. In 2004, the federal government implemented a conditional cash transfer program called Bolsa Familia. This program aims to reduce poverty and break the intergenerational transmission of poverty by investing on children’s human capital. In the last decade, the Bolsa Familia has grown considerably and became an international reference of public policy committed to poverty reduction. The Bolsa Familia has an intricate design that is based on a multi-levelled coordination of actions and centred on the multidimensionality of poverty. Therefore, the aim of this case study is to explore how the multidimensional aspects of poverty are integrated to the Bolsa Familia design and to understand how the program operationalizes these theoretical concepts of poverty.