Avaliação do impacto dos programas bolsa-escola sobre o trabalho infantil no Brasil

Abstract

The minimum income for school attendance programs—like Bolsa-Escola in Brazil—in general do not request formally that the child quits his/her job to receive the benefit. However, since school attendance is mandatory, which reduces the available time for other activities, and there is a cash transfer that substitutes the child’s income from work, the decrease in the labor market participation is a spillover effect of the program, whose objectives are to stimulate the demand for formal education and to alleviate current poverty. Evaluating the impact of the Bolsa Escola Programs on the child labour in Brazil based on microdata from the Brazilian National Household Sample Survey 2001 [Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD)], using least squares model for the number of weekly hours worked by children for those who works and a probit model for the family’s decision of children’s participation in the labor force, it is possible to conclude that the program is really efficient to decrease children’s weekly hours of work, but the results for participation in the labor force was inconclusive. An additional stipend has diminished the weekly hours worked by children living in rural and urban areas by approximately three hours.