Bolsa Família has also made great strides toward Lula’s goal of breaking the transmission of poverty from one generation to the next: by helping increase vaccination rates to 99 percent of the population, by decreasing malnutrition among children in Brazil’s poorest regions by 16 percent, and by increasing their chances of having a healthy weight-to-age ratio by 26 percent. Infant mortality has dropped by 40 percent in the last decade, with deaths from malnutrition specifically down by 58 percent—one of the sharpest reductions ever seen anywhere. Meanwhile, the number of children forced to work instead of attending school has fallen by 14 percent. Bolsa Família recipients now boast a graduation rate double that of poor Brazilian children outside the program, and the initiative is credited with improving school attendance in the country’s poorest regions by 14 percent. One happy consequence: the national literacy rate has already risen.
The program has also produced some less tangible and less predictable—although just as important—changes in the lives and attitudes of Brazil’s poorest citizens. One recent survey found that by giving them authority over their families’ bank accounts, Bolsa Família has empowered Brazilian women; for example, female Bolsa Família participants are ten percent more likely to say that they have exclusive authority over contraception in their marriages. And the program seems to have had a dramatic impact on poor Brazilians’ sense of agency. A recent survey of 1,400 Bolsa Família beneficiaries in three different cities found that rather than feeling stigmatized by their dependence on the government program, three-quarters of respondents said that they were proud to be enrolled and that, by allowing them to properly feed and clothe their children without having to beg, Bolsa Família has helped them “lead more autonomous and dignified lives.”
Brazilians enrolled in the program even express increased faith in their country’s democracy. That might seem an odd outcome for a welfare program, but as Lula explains, “Part of the reason Bolsa Família has been so successful is because the money is paid directly, with no intermediary. It is the beneficiary who goes to the bank with a plastic card to withdraw the money. So this person doesn’t owe any favors to the president, to their governor, to their congressman, or to their mayor.” And the lack of middlemen also makes it hard, if not impossible, for officials to skim off the top.
Finally, just as Lula promised, Bolsa Família has provided a significant boost to the overall economy. By giving the poor more money to spend, the program has increased domestic consumption, an especially important economic driver in a country like Brazil, which shuns most imports. Although most of the money is spent on food, Lula says that “of the people that received benefits under the Bolsa, 80 percent of them bought a television set, 79 percent of them bought a refrigerator, and 50 percent of them bought a washing machine. So what had seemed like a program just for people who were living in eighteenth-century conditions helped meet the needs of modern manufacturers, generating millions of jobs. Everyone won.” That may sound like boasting, but the numbers bear it out: economists calculate that since its launch, Bolsa Família has increased Brazil’s GDP growth by 1.78 reais for every one real disbursed.