O impacto das regras do Programa Bolsa Família sobre a fecundidade das beneficiárias

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate a possible incentive from the Bolsa Família Program to increase the fertility of its beneficiaries due to its rules, according to which the amount of funds transferred depends on the number of family children. Social programs can have almost immediate impact on reducing poverty and inequality, as well as the rates of school enrollment and labor supply, but not on fertility. Thus, a longer period of exposure to the effects of the Program is necessary so that the beneficiaries assimilate the rules and benefits of income transfer and decide if it is worth or not to generate another child to expand the income coming from the Program. The differential of this study lies in the construction of a more appropriate counterfactual to the problem of interest, and in the analysis of this impact over a longer period of exposure of the beneficiaries to the effects of the Bolsa Família Program, since studies performed to date have assessed this issue at an early stage of the program duration, when its coverage rate and understanding was still limited. In this study, it is used the Brazilian Census 2010, applying the covariates selection algorithm proposed by Imbens (2014) and the method of propensity score matching. The results showed that the Bolsa Família Program generates little incentive to the generation of the second child, being the Midwest and Northeast regions had the highest impact values.