Paper short abstract:

Brazil’s Bolsa Família is the largest CCT program in the world. Analysis of longitudinal data on health and food security indicates it may underperform in subsistence-based Amazonian communities. An understanding of intra- and inter-household dynamics helps explain these disappointing results.

Paper long abstract:

The highly-publicized success of Brazil's Bolsa Família Program, the largest conditional cash transfer program in the world, has become a model for similar programs elsewhere, including in highly rural African nations. This is despite the dearth of information on the impact of the program in rural contexts. Drawing on a unique natural experiment and using detailed health and dietary data collected in rural Amazonian subsistence-based households, we analyze the impact of this critical policy on programmatic goals among the rural poor. Our data demonstrate the urgent need for more fine-grained biocultural research on this and similar policies. We show that despite close adherence to programmatic conditionalities, recipient households' food security was measurably worse off and children's poor nutritional status was virtually unchanged four years into the program. Using insights from long-term ethnographic data collection, we discuss the mechanisms, including changes in intra-household and inter-household dynamics, which help explain these disappointing results in this rural zone, and raise broader questions about the role of conditional cash transfer programs for breaking the cycle of poverty in subsistence-based communities worldwide.