The long-term effects of conditional cash transfers on child labor and school enrollment

This paper investigates the long-term e ects of conditional cash transfers on school attainment and child labor. To this end, we construct a dynamic heterogeneous agent model, calibrate it with Brazilian data, and introduce a policy similar to the Brazilian Bolsa Fam lia. Our results suggest that this type of policy has a very strong impact on educational outcomes, sharply increasing primary school completion. The conditional transfer is also able to reduce the share of working children from 22% to 17%. We then compute the transition to the new steady state and show that the program actually increases child labor over the short run, because the transfer is not enough to completely cover the schooling costs, so children have to work to be able to comply with the program's schooling eligibility requirement. We also evaluate the impacts on poverty, inequality, and welfare.

The long term effects of Bolsa Família on child labour and school enrolment

In this paper we study the e ects of conditional cash transfers in school enrolment and tackling child labour. We develop a dynamic heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model, where households face a set of tradeo s while allocating their children's time in leisure activities, schooling and working. We calibrate the model using data from the Brazilian survey PNAD, before the policy was implemented, in order to quantify the e ects of a conditional transfer. We then evaluate the results of a policy experiment that implements a conditional cash transfer scheme similar to the Brazilian Bolsa Fam lia. Our results suggest that the program, in the long term, is able to substantially increase school registration and reduce child labour and poverty. In addition, we nd out that a progressive conditional cash transfer results is even more e ective in tackling child labour and increasing school enrolment.

The long term effects of Bolsa Família on child labour and school enrollment

Neste trabalho, estudamos os impactos de transfer^encias condicionais de renda sobre o trabalho e a educa c~ao infantis. Para tanto, desenvolvemos modelo din^amico de equil brio geral com agentes heterog^eneos, onde as fam lias enfrentam tradeo s com rela c~ao a aloca c~ao de tempo das crian cas em atividades de lazer, em escolaridade e em trabalhar. O modelo e calibrado usando dados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra em Domic lios, de modo que podemos quanti car os efeitos de uma pol tica de transfer^encia de renda. Finalmente, avaliamos o impacto de um pol tica semelhante ao atual Bolsa Fam lia. Nossos resultados sugerem que o programa, no longo prazo, e capaz de induzir um aumento substancial na escolaridade, al em de ser efetivo na redu c~ao do trabalho infantil e da pobreza. Al em disso, mostramos que um programa progressivo de transfer^encia condicional de renda resulta em benef cios ainda maiores.