Where Are the Jobs that Take People Out of Poverty in Brazil?

In Brazil?s urban areas, job opportunities determine economic mobility and poverty. But not every job provides enough earnings to take families out of poverty. Jobs for poor workers are scarce in the formal sector. To improve their income, the poor resort to informal, unregistered jobs that are highly vulnerable. The contribution of informal jobs to poverty reduction should not be neglected.Where Are the Jobs that Take People Out of Poverty in Brazil?

Evaluating the Impact of Brazil?s Bolsa Família: Cash Transfer Programmes in Comparative Perspective

Bolsa Família, CCT, Cash Transfer

Do Changes in the Labour Market Take Families out of Poverty? Determinants of Exiting Poverty in Brazilian Metropolitan Regions

The objective of this Working Paper is to estimate the likelihood of the exit of households from poverty and identify the determinants of this transition, taking into consideration the length of time that households have spent in poverty. Our focus is to analyze whether short-term changes in the labour market affect the probability of exiting or remaining in poverty. We use the only panel data that are available in Brazil for carrying out this kind of analysis: the Monthly Employment Survey (PME), which was conducted from March 2002 to May 2007. However, since this survey follows households for a very short period of time, we had to adopt estimation techniques that control for cases of right- and left-censoring. The most important results in this Working Paper are: 1) the longer the spell of poverty, the lower the probability of exiting it; 2) households that entered into poverty with zero income (namely, their poverty income gap was equal to one) are not those with the lowest probability of exiting this condition; 3) changes in the unemployment rate of household members do not directly affect the duration of the household?s poverty; and 4) the increase of the average wage of informal workers has a significant, positive effect on the probability of the exit of poor households from poverty.Duration of poverty spell; Poverty exit; Labour market; Survival models for left-censored data.

The Programa Subsidio de Alimentos in Mozambique: Baseline Evaluation

The Food Subsidy Programme (Programa Subsidio de Alimentos, PSA) is the main basic social protection programme of the government of Mozambique in terms of coverage. It was established in 1990 to help the destitute elderly (women above 55 and men above 60), people living with a disability, the chronically sick and their dependants by providing a monthly cash transfer. The programme falls under the mandate of the Ministry for Women and Social Action (MMAS), while implementation is the responsibility of the National Institute for Social Action (INAS), the Ministry?s executing agency. By the end of 2008, the PSA covered 143,455 households with a total of 287,454 beneficiaries. The main direct beneficiaries were the elderly (93 per cent), followed by people living with disabilities (6 per cent) and the chronically ill (1 per cent). The general eligibility criteria are: age, residency for more than six months in the selected area, per capita earnings less than the minimum benefit on the PSA scale, and/or recognised by medical declaration to be chronically ill or living with a disability. Potential beneficiaries are selected by a local intermediary (known as a Permanente) chosen by the community and appointed by INAS, after which the application undergoes an approval process within the INAS delegation. Although the PSA is a national programme, it does not reach the entire eligible population and its coverage is unequally distributed across districts. This is the result of the absence of an expansion strategy based on poverty incidence and population density. Expansion of the PSA was initially restricted to urban areas in order to mitigate the effects of the post-war structural adjustment programme on the urban population (Low et al., 1999). Currently, expansion to remote rural areas is a programme priority. The programme?s administrative cost is considered high relative to the amount transferred to the beneficiaries (Ellis, 2007). Though the programme is the largest in terms of the number of beneficiaries, its coverage is low relative to the potential universe of beneficiaries. Expansion of the programme tends to diminish the administrative costs in relative terms. In 2008, the PSA underwent two important reforms. First, the subsidy scale increased. The subsidy amount for the first (direct) beneficiaries rose from 70 to 100 meticais (US$2.5 to US$3.6), and the additional benefit for dependants increased from 10 to 50 meticais (US$0.36 to US$1.80) per dependant up to four. The second reform was the greater focus on the inclusion of eligible dependants as indirect beneficiaries in the payment scheme, and the monitoring and evaluation system. Though it is a relatively old programme, it has never been evaluated before. An opportunity to conduct an evaluation has arisen in the context of the reforms. This Policy Research Brief seeks to improve knowledge of the PSA by presenting the first part of the PSA impact evaluation?that is, the summary of the baseline report.The Programa Subsidio de Alimentos in Mozambique: Baseline Evaluation

Debating Targeting Methods for Cash Transfers: A Multidimensional Index vs. an Income Proxy for Paraguay?s Tekoporã Programme

There is a lively global debate on how to target beneficiaries of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes. In this Evaluation Note we analyze alternative targeting methods for Paraguay?s CCT programme, Tekoporã. The major practical choice for Paraguay is between a multidimensional quality-of-life index and a proxy-means test for income. We focus on the efficiency and efficacy of these approaches by examining primarily the trade-off between leakage and coverage. Tekoporã is a CCT programme that is being scaled up in Paraguay. Like other recent CCT programmes, it was designed in the context of a national strategy for combating poverty, as part of the general effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Its pilot started in August 2005, covering 4,500 households in five districts of two departments. Tekoporã is gradually expanding and intends to cover 35 districts by 2008. These districts were selected from the pool of 66 districts that had been judged to have the most vulnerable populations, according to a scoring system based on a Geographical Prioritization Index (IPG). Tekoporã?s objective is to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty by means of the cash transfer and follow-up activities for beneficiary households. This follow-up consists of the monitoring of co-responsibilities (between beneficiaries and the programme) with regard to the supply and use of health and education facilities and the development of related family-support activities. (...)Debating Targeting Methods for Cash Transfers: A Multidimensional Index vs. an Income Proxy for Paraguay?s Tekoporã Programme

Fluctuations and persistence in poverty: a transient-chronic decomposition model for pseudo-panel data

Although many studies addressed poverty issues, very few of then did analyze the transient or persistent nature of this phenomenon. Encouraged by this lack of dynamic poverty analyses, the objective of this paper is to evaluate which features determine the relative position and the dynamics of the destitution state of the individual. Due to the scarcity of panel surveys in Brazil, it was used a pseudo-panel obtained from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD/IBGE) database in this study. With these data, the state permanence and the state transience probabilities were estimated in a Markov matrix with the application of a bivariate probit model with endogenous switching for grouped data. It was chosen as the welfare indicator the per capita household income, which was analyzed in relation to a relative poverty line. Moreover, in order to verify the sensibility of the parameters estimated in the econometric analysis, distinct poverty lines were used and also different assumptions of household scale economies and of intrahousehold relative costs were made. The transient-chronic analysis is based on the distinction between stationary and transient components of intertemporal propensity to poverty. The results enabled to identify which groups in the population were especially sensitive to the chronic and to the transient types of poverty.chronic poverty; transient poverty; state persistence; state transition; endogenous switching probit model; pseudo-panel; Brazil

Achievements and Shortfalls of Conditional Cash Transfers: Impact Evaluation of Paraguay?s Tekoporã Programme

The International Poverty Centre (IPC), with the support of GTZ and UNFPA, has recently undertaken an impact evaluation of the pilot of Tekoporã, a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme in Paraguay. Previously, IPC analysed the logical framework of this programme and its implementation challenges, and assessed its targeting mechanisms. This Evaluation Note presents a summary of the impacts of the programme on household behaviour and well-being, as reported in Soares et al. (2008). The evaluation of a pilot project can offer important inputs into the decision-making process on the feasibility of the scaling-up of the programme, the effectiveness of its design and the assessment of problems that limit its potential. The evaluation of Tekoporã shows positive impacts on per capita income and consumption, poverty reduction, school attendance, investment in agricultural production, access to credit, savings and social participation. Indeed, these results easily justify its scaling-up. However, the pilot has not been successful in reducing child labour or increasing child immunizations. Thus, addressing these aspects needs to be a key part of any redesign of the programme when it is scaled up. Tekoporã seeks to reduce extreme poverty by using direct cash transfers to poor households with children and diminish the potential for future poverty by encouraging investment in human and social capital. The programme intends to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty through investments in the health and education of children. The transfers are conditional on school attendance, regular visits to health centres and updating of immunizations. The programme also includes a family support initiative that, among having other effects, should increase the productive potential of the household and its social participation. (...)Achievements and Shortfalls of Conditional Cash Transfers: Impact Evaluation of Paraguay?s Tekoporã Programme

Targeting and Coverage of the Bolsa Família Programme: Why Knowing What You Measure Is Important In Choosing the Numbers

The trade-off between targeting and coverage has always been something of a quandary for progressive cash transfers, particularly those that are not entitlements. Undue inclusion errors mean that families or individuals whose need is not so great are being paid at the expense of either taxpayers or other budgetary priorities. Undue exclusion errors mean that those who are in need, sometimes in desperate need, are not being helped by the state. This trade-off is somewhat less extreme for entitlements. If the law says that families whose income is less than a quarter of a minimum wage are entitled to a given cash allowance, then all those whose income falls under that line should receive the allowance. There is still a trade-off because measurement error still occurs, but the discussion centres only on the inclusion criteria. Most conditional cash transfers (CCTs), however, are not entitlements. (...)Targeting and Coverage of the Bolsa Família Programme: Why Knowing What You Measure Is Important In Choosing the Numbers