An Analysis of social assistance programmes during the neoliberal era : Bolsa familia programme in Brazil as a case study

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2012
Durdu, Tuba
Brazil was confronted with high inflation while implementing neoliberal economic policies which were imposed as a panacea to the debt crisis during the process of transition to democracy since 1985. In this context, implementation of structural adjustment and stabilization programs further deteriorated its already unequal distribution of income and exposed the poor to devastating effects of the intermittent crises which were in turn the result of macro-economic policies pursued. Conditional cash transfers which were started to be made in 1995 to extremely poor people against the effects of crises by a few local governments were subsequently expanded in terms of its scope and geography. From 2004 onwards, it was begun to be implemented in the whole country under the title of Bolsa Familia, by President Lula, PT (Labor Party) leader who came to power after the 2002 elections. The program had two objectives: 1. Immediate relief of poverty through the transfer of income, 2. To get people out of poverty and to prevent intergenerational transmission of poverty through conditionalities based on education and health services. Positive impacts were observed in relation to the achievement of the first goal; but the outcomes of the studies on the second goal are not promising. So, the aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the second goal is realizable by examining these studies and their outcomes with reference to the causes of poverty; and to determine the relationship between our results and structural limitations of the program.

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Citation Formats
T. Durdu, “An Analysis of social assistance programmes during the neoliberal era : Bolsa familia programme in Brazil as a case study,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2012.