Cash Transfers and Productive Inclusion: Evidence from Bolsa Familia / Michael C. Best, Felipe Lobel, Valdemar Pinho Neto.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Best, Michael C.

Contributor:

Lobel, Felipe.

Pinho Neto, Valdemar.

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w35006.

NBER working paper series no. w35006

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2026.

Summary:

We study how cash transfers affect work and health. Exploiting an increase in the generosity of the world's largest cash-transfer program for the extremely poor, we show that the reform raised employment by 5 percent while sharply improving health: hospitalization fell 8 percent and mortality 14 percent, saving roughly 1,000 lives. These findings challenge the view that transfers reduce work. Instead, transfers can relax binding subsistence and health constraints, raise productivity, and expand labor supply. We formalize this mechanism in a model of productive inclusion and use it to evaluate welfare, yielding lessons for antipoverty policy design in low-income settings.

Notes:

March 2026.

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