Paper short abstract:

This paper offers evidence on young people's schooling in Brazil's Bolsa Família programme to argue that such a segmented approach to policy may contribute to segmented outcomes for young beneficiaries, challenging the idea that CCTs may facilitate long-term poverty reduction.

Paper long abstract:

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become a central feature of the social policy landscape across Latin America and increasingly other parts of the developing world. On the one hand, these programmes have incorporated large portions of the population previously excluded from social welfare systems, and in many ways, from the benefits and rights of citizenship. On the other hand, CCTs represent a highly segmented approach to social policy, in terms of both social service provision and the conceptualisation of poverty embodied in such programmes. This paper argues that such a segmented approach to social policy appears to reinforce segmented outcomes among beneficiaries. Based on qualitative research with young beneficiaries of Brazil's Bolsa Família programme, this paper offers evidence of persistent segmentation in schooling. Despite modest increases in school enrolment and attendance rates, (timely) progression and completion of the basic education cycle remains problematic among beneficiary youth. Moreover, the quality of schooling accessed by beneficiaries appears incompatible with the necessary human capital formation to alter young people's labour market and life trajectories. The findings suggest that the highly segmented education system into which young beneficiary are inserted may serve to reinforce their limited opportunities over the long-term. This fundamentally challenges the notion that CCTs' can facilitate their aim of long-term, intergenerational poverty reduction through improved schooling and in turn altered life trajectories and outcomes. The findings also suggest the need to consider the ways in which CCTs may or may not contribute to more inclusionary social welfare systems.