Comments and Reviews

The question raised at the end, does strike me as a difficult - if not an impossible task: i.e. the challenge of targeting only those people that would not enroll their children in absence of the Bolsa Família programme. Whatever targeting mechanism is used (geographical targeting, self selection or (proxy) means testing) you want to reach the poor, not the poor who don’t send their children to school. Even if one would acquire the data necessary for this level of targeting, it would create the wrong incentives (like taking children out of school to qualify for receiving the benefit). In the article it is mentioned that 82% of the beneficiaries would have send their children to school regardless of Bolsa Família. Wouldn’t a more relevant question for further research be if the 12% of poor, which were stimulated by the programme to send their children in school, continue to do so if the programme ends? And if not, can the programme be considered successful? And if so, is there a need to continue to use education (enrollment) as a condition for receiving benefits or change the conditionality to say health, etc.?

Posted by Kim Boermans on March 22, 2010 at 11:07 AM BRT #