scholarly journals Evolution of child labor rate in Brazilian states: policy limits and contradictions

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-295
Author(s):  
Temidayo James Aransiola ◽  
Marcelo Justus

Abstract This study descriptively explores the evolution of child labor rates in Brazilian states from 2000 to 2014 and indicates specific limits and contradictions of governmental measures adopted for its reduction. On one hand, we examine the coverage of the Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer (PBF), which is a transversal program to reduce poverty. On the other hand, we examine the design of Labor Inspections with a focus on child labor. For this, we used data from the National Household Sample Survey, the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Labor and Employment. Our analysis showed that the expressive reduction of the child labor rate in Brazil was driven, in particular, by the rural areas of the North and Northeast regions. However, the agricultural sector is still the major employer of child labor. We also found that the distribution of governmental countermeasures are contradictory as to the rate of child labor in the states. Inspection activities are shorthanded in fighting child labor in domestic work and family agriculture as a result of the constitutional apparatus of the inviolability of homes. The PBF conditional cash transfer is also limited in tackling child labor given that poverty level determines eligibility.

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paloma Santana Moreira Pais ◽  
Felipe de Figueiredo Silva ◽  
Evandro Camargos Teixeira

Purpose The Brazilian Government created the Bolsa Familia program to combat poverty and the insertion of so many children into the labor market. This program is an income transfer program subject to certain conditions such as a minimum school attendance for children under 17 years of age. In 2006, almost half of the people with an income per capita of R$300.00 (US$139.53) per month declared that they received this benefit. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of Bolsa Familia on child labor in Brazil in 2006. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a propensity score matching model with data from the National Household Sample Survey PESQUISA NACIONAL POR AMOSTRA DE DOMICÍLIOS (PNAD), for 2006. Findings Results indicate that the program increased the number of hours of child labor in Brazil. However, this outcome might be explained by the fact that those families who received Bolsa Familia were also those with higher socioeconomic vulnerability. Thus, they need to guarantee their survival with the income generated via child labor. Social implications The Brazilian Government needs to invest not only in monetary transfer policies but also in the improvement of the job market to create opportunities for the social development of children. Originality/value The contribution of the paper is the investigation into the effect of the Bolsa Familia program on the average time allocated to child labor; the authors find that this time allocation could be reduced by requiring a compulsory school attendance.


Author(s):  
Eric Draeger

AbstractIn several Latin American countries, conditional cash transfer programmes are a proven means of alleviating poverty in the short term and promoting education of children from disadvantaged families in the longer run. While the effectiveness of the Brazilian Bolsa Família for children’s education outcomes up to 15 years of age has been widely documented, its contribution to the promotion of students of secondary school age has not been fully explored in light of the programme’s expansion to 16-17 years olds in 2008. In this paper, I draw on Brazilian National Household Sample Survey data and use a difference-in-differences approach already applied in research in the context of Bolsa Família extension. Whereas these data were previously examined to detect intent-to-treat (ITT) effects due to insufficient information on treatment status, in this study I rely on a classifier method to additionally estimate average treatment effects on the treated who belong to families supposedly receiving Bolsa Família cash transfers. The results suggest that school attendance rates for 16-year-olds are particularly increased in the Brazilian Northeast, although the estimates are not significant when further time periods are taken into account. As comparably poor but non-recipient households have larger and consistently significant gains of school attendance, the effect on adolescent’s education directly caused by the expansion of Bolsa Família remains ambiguous and thus cast doubt on the specific parallel trend assumption. In addition, no long-run ITT effects of the programme’s expansion on school participation among 16 year old teenagers are found.


Author(s):  
Babayo Sule ◽  
Usman Sambo

Poverty is a phenomenon that is affecting our society negatively as its scorch keeps on biting harder despite the rate in which revenue is rising in Nigeria. Gombe State is one of the states that is categorized among the poorest in Nigeria for a decade. Poverty is affecting the socioeconomic and political wellbeing of Gombe State in many perspectives. This paper examined the issues and perspectives of poverty in Gombe State particularly the causes, manifestations and strategies of alleviation. The work used primary and secondary sources of data collection where some respondents were selected through a simple random sampling for questionnaire administration and other key stakeholders were identified for an in-depth interview. The secondary source involves documents such as books, reports, journals and internet sources. The data obtained were presented and analysed using statistical tools such as tables and charts where applicable. The paper concludes that; poverty is caused mainly due to poor government’s macro and micro economic policies and that poverty level in Gombe State has reached an unbearable index of 74.6 % according to the research and also the National Bureau of Statistics report which ranked the State the third most poor State in the country in 2015. The paper recommends that, for poverty to be alleviated in Gombe State, there should be a comprehensive and integrated approach via well designed policies such as Conditional Cash Transfer, development of agricultural sector, small scale industrialisation and youth empowerment schemes. It is also recommended that some models like Malaysian social investment and empowerment should be considered.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Chiodi ◽  
◽  
Verónica Escudero

What works to reduce child labor in agriculture? In this paper, we evaluate two randomized livelihood intervention programs, aimed to reduce child labor, particularly in its most exploitative forms, in rural areas of Peru and the Philippines. In the first randomized experiment, we evaluate a livelihood intervention provided to farmers in Peru that use the labor of their children on their family farms, accompanied by an education intervention aimed to improve the quality of schools and an awareness-raising intervention. In the second randomized experiment, we evaluate the incremental effect of the livelihood intervention implemented within a similar program in the Philippines, focused on the sugarcane agricultural sector. We find that when livelihood interventions were provided alone, they did not manage to improve economic conditions, and hence generally failed to reduce child labor rates in rural areas. However, when the livelihood intervention was combined with measures to improve the quality of education in Peru, we see a reduction in hazardous child labor and child labor overall. Awareness-raising interventions, aimed at changing the perceptions of parents through community interaction, appear to have also had an effect in the reduction of child labor, and these effects were reinforced by education interventions. Results indicate that a comprehensive approach including livelihood support with education and awareness-raising components is a more effective way to reduce child labor and hazardous labor for children in the agricultural sector.


Author(s):  
Armando Barrientos

This chapter examines the role that public policy initiatives—specifically anti-poverty transfers—have played in the reduction of poverty and inequality in Brazil. A number of anti-poverty initiatives are considered in turn, and not just the widely known Bolsa Familia conditional cash transfer program. The analysis establishes that such transfers—including conditional cash transfers—have proved surprisingly effective, even helping to tackle long-standing income inequality. It is recognized that explicit anti-poverty initiatives were not the only drivers of the reduced incidence of poverty and inequality: factors such as growth and improved access to labor markets also played a role. However, progress is now threatened by the recent economic and political crisis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camila Ferreira Soares ◽  
Everton Emanuel Campos de Lima

Brazil’s Bolsa Família Programme (BFP) aims to combat poverty and social inequalities through monetary transfers to families. A much-discussed indirect effect of the programme was its correlation to the fertility of the beneficiary families. In this paper, we use a cohort fertility approach with parity progression ratios that differs from existing literature, which mainly used period fertility measures, to better understand the relationship between fertility and the BFP. This study analyses the relationship between the BFP and the reproduction of Brazilian women. We use data from the 2010 Brazilian micro-censuses, the only census after the start of the BFP in 2004, to reconstruct the childbirth history of women with incomplete reproductive cycles (women aged 25 to 29), and estimate parity progression ratios (PPRs) and cohort fertility rates (CFR). In addition, we estimate propensity score matching (PSM) models comparing fertility outcomes of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the programme. Our results show distinct differences in CFRs and PPRs. On average, BFP beneficiaries had more children than women not covered by the programme. This finding remained consistent even after controlling for educational gradients and other covariates. Our empirical findings show that women opt for a “rational” strategy, where they tend to have children in more rapid succession up until three children. These findings contradict the recent literature that has not found any correlation between BFP and fertility. The results also suggest that cohort analyses may fill certain gaps left by previous studies of period fertility. This paper is one of a few that have analysed the relationship between a conditional income transfer programme and cohort measures in Brazil.


JEJAK ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
Muhammad Amir Arham ◽  
Ahmad Fadhli ◽  
Sri Indriyani Dai

Agriculture is the primary sector in many provinces in Indonesia. In fact, most of the rural communities work in the agricultural sector. Nevertheless, the poverty level in rural areas remains high. Therefore, this study was aimed at investigating the performance of the agricultural sector in reducing the rural poverty level in Indonesia, and to investigate factors that contribute as a determinant in reducing rural poverty level in Indonesia. This study was significant, considering that the result was to contribute to government policy evaluation in the agricultural sector, especially in reducing poverty in rural areas. This study used quantitative analysis through multiple regressions with data panel from 2014 to 2017 from 33 provinces in Indonesia. This study revealed that the increase of agricultural sector share and the widening of the income distribution had caused an increase in poor people in a rural area. This finding also revealed that the income distribution gap was a determinant to the severity of rural poverty. The growth in the agricultural sector to contribute toward the economy could reduce rural poverty level in Indonesia. Meanwhile, agricultural financing, economic growth, inflation, and the farmer exchange rate had not significantly contributed to reducing the poverty level.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Camilla Christine de Souza Cherol ◽  
Aline Alves Ferreira ◽  
Rosana Salles-Costa

Abstract Objective: To assess the access to government programmes and their association with food insecurity (FI) in families from quilombolas communities in Brazil. Design: An analysis of secondary data from the 2011 Quilombolas Census was performed in Brazilian territories. The Brazilian Household Food Insecurity Measurement Scale (Escala Brasileira de Insegurança Alimentar, EBIA) was used to assess the household FI status. The relationships of governmental programmes with the levels of FI were estimated using logistic regression models. Setting: Greater national survey census of food and nutritional security of the recognised Quilombolas Brazilian territories. Participants: Totally, 8743 quilombolas families. Results: The prevalence of household FI was 86·1 % (moderate/severe FI: 55·9 %, 95 % CI 54·8, 56·9). After adjustment for socio-demographic variables, access to rural development programmes (Food Acquisition Program: OR: 0·6, 95 % CI 0·4, 0·8, P-value < 0·01) and health programmes (Center for Family Health Support: OR: 0·5, 95 % CI 0·5, 0·7, P-value < 0·001) is inversely and significantly associated with moderate/severe FI. The Brazilian conditional cash transfer programme (Bolsa Família) was associated with quilombolas families with moderate/severe levels of FI (OR: 3·3, 95 % CI 2·8, 4·0, P-value < 0·001). Conclusions: The prevalence of FI was high among quilombolas families. Despite reduced participation in governmental programmes, rural development, agriculture and conditional cash transfer programmes are fundamental to the autonomy of quilombolas communities. In spite of the low participation, when families are able to access these programmes, the study revealed the importance of these initiatives in reducing the likelihood of severe levels of FI.


2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-74
Author(s):  
Natasha Borges Sugiyama ◽  
Wendy Hunter

ABSTRACTConditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have emerged as an important social welfare innovation across the Global South in the last two decades. That poor mothers are typically the primary recipients of the grants renders easy, but not necessarily correct, the notion that CCTs empower women. This article assesses the relationship between the world’s largest CCT, Brazil’s Bolsa Família, and women’s empowerment. To systematize and interpret existing research, including our own, it puts forth a three-part framework that examines the program’s effects on economic independence, physical health, and psychosocial well-being. Findings suggest that women experience some improved status along all three dimensions, but that improvements are far from universal. A core conclusion is that the broader institutional context in which the Bolsa Família is embedded—that is, ancillary services in health and social assistance—is crucial for conditioning the degree of empowerment obtained.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document