The Brazilian Cash Transfer Program: Programa Bolsa-Família, a Study in Ceilandia City

The Brazilian cash transfer program: “Programa Bolsa-Família”(PBF) is the most relevant strategy of the Federal Government that focuses on the reduction of poverty and  social iniquities. Total investment its’ over U$6 billion/year (quotation of exchange- 3rd of June, 2008) and aims at eleven million poor families that have to be under an established monthly per capita income and fulfill an agenda of obligations in health and educational areas, denominated conditionalities. The health conditionalities are directed to families having children under the age of 7 or/and pregnant women. These conditionalities respectively include the vaccination calendar and medical appointments offered by the Brazilian Public Health System. The current study was conducted in the city of Ceilândia, Distrito Federal, in 2007, with 338 beneficiary households (n=1666) with children under the age of 7. It was home-based with the application of a semi-structured questionnaire. It was adopted a random sample and a detailed demographic and social-economic typology of the beneficiary families in order to check for the adequacy of their income profiles to the PBF requirements. The study analyzes the impact of the income transfer family budgets and relates their characteristics to the health conditionalities. The results demonstrate that approximately seventy nine percent of the families have their income profiles adequated to the PBF criteria. The cash transferred by the program causes considerable impact on the home per capita monthly income. In what concerns the health conditionalities, 62% of the head families reported that they were not aware of the obligations  required by the PBF. In the same group, 64% claimed they didn’t modify their behavior of monitoring children’s health under the age of 7, after joining the program.