El Programa Bolsa Familia y la pobreza en Brasil: mucho más que números a considerar

Abstract

The Bolsa Familia (Family Bag) Program (PBF), created in 2003, became the largest conditional transfer income program of Brazil and of the world, due to the number of beneficed families and their increasing budget. This program is known by a large part of the local population and has obtained political and academic interest. The aim of this article is to discuss this public policy in its different stages, considering both: institutional (design, implementation and management model) and subjective aspects ( the vision of the addressees). Ethnographic data collected from a field research performed with twenty PBF beneficiaries living in the cities of Sao Paulo and Sao Carlos are analyzed. Differences and similarities regarding the effects of the Program on the beneficiaries living conditions are compared, highlighting the interaction between the target population and the instruments and agents of this policy. One of the observed effects is that the target population does not understand the benefits as a social right, but as an aid given by the government or something that fell from the sky. They also do not identify with the concept of beneficiary, widely used in official documents and academic papers.