Family, poverty and access to income transfer programs in the metropolitan regions of Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this article is to describe the family arrangements most vulnerable to impoverishment in the metropolitan regions of Brazil and to investigate the access of very poor families to such programs, as well as some of their effects on the earnings of these families. The household arrangements most vulnerable to impoverishment are those with the lowest per capita family income and those in the lowest income deciles. They show varying family structures and compositions and go through different moments in their family life cycles, but they are the hardest hit in terms of changes in employment patterns, since their family compositions are unfavorable for their members to enter the labor market. The impoverishment of households in the Brazilian metropolitan regions during the 1990s and the first years of the 21st century reflects the fall in income from work, due to the unstable job market that resulted from the restructuring of production and the country’s low economic growth until 2004. Even by 2006, with economic improvements, these earnings failed to return to the levels of the mid-1990s. Among the policies set up in the government’s “fight against poverty,” one resource was the income transfer program, which was quite limited in the first years of the new century. It was intensified during the decade, enabling easier access to low-income households. By presenting a comparative analysis between the data from the PNADs of 2004 and 2006, we seek in this article to identify the access to such programs by households characterized by different types of family arrangements, considering their structures and the stage in the families’ life cycle. One of the impacts to be investigated is the fall in the number of households with zero income. The lower inequality in income among the most vulnerable family arrangements, as well as among other types, are also discussed, and it is noted that there continue to be differences in per capita income.