The effect of Bolsa Familia Program on mitigating adolescent school dropouts due to maternity: An area analysis

Abstract

This study evaluates the effect of the Brazilian conditional cash transfer program, Programa Bolsa Familia (PBF), on the school attendance of adolescent mothers. Given the previously documented effect of PBF on the school attendance of young people who are not usually mothers, we investigate to what extent this effect differs between adolescent mothers and non-mothers. A two-stage analysis was performed using the 2010 Brazilian census, enabling us to compare results from regions across the country. The results indicate that a higher incidence of PBF is not associated with a smaller gap in school attendance between mothers and non-mothers, i.e, young mothers do not benefit from the program as much as non-mothers in areas where the benefit is more prevalent.