Brazil - Assessment of the Bolsa Escola Programs
Brazil - Assessment of the Bolsa Escola Programs
The report assesses the "Bolsa Escola" programs in Brazil, which are poverty-targeted social assistance programs, that provide cash grants to poor families with school-age children between the ages of seven to fourteen. These programs aim at increasing educational attainment, to reduce current, and future poverty, as well as child labor, and, implicitly, to act as a partial safety net. The rationale for these programs should be considered in the context of the current picture of poverty in the country, where the strongest correlates of current poverty is low education.