The Impact of Bolsa-Família Program on Fertility Behavior

Bruna A. Signorini, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Bernardo L. Queiroz, Centro de Desenvolvimento e Planejamento Regional (CEDEPLAR)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of Bolsa-Família on beneficiary’s fertility behavior. We attempt to investigate the fertility decisions between women who are recipients of the program with those who are not. We use the National Household Sample Survey, carried out annually by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. We carried out a probabilist matching procedure. The procedure matches units from different groups (recipient and not) that are similar in terms of observable characteristics. The idea is to select women in the treatment group who are identical to women in the control group, except for the fact that women in the treatment group receive a benefit (Bolsa-Família).