An essential question about policies that aim to foster socio-economic inclusion and income generation - which is the case of policies that support market access - is their capacity to guarantee a sustainable process of the economic capacities of their beneficiaries. In this study, the Brazilian...

Herein, the influence of institutions and of social and political preferences upon the design and the implementation of the Brazilian non contributive income cash transfer to the elderly and disabled poor - Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC) - is analyzed. The main argument is that...

This study aims to present microsimulations of the future of non-contributory social transfers in Brazil, discussing trade-offs of benefit designs, estimating costs and impacts on poverty and inequality and assessing operational and budgetary issues. We simulate the adoption of three different...

In this paper we analyze Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua (PNAD Contínua) microdata from 2012 to 2018 to document how the mid-decade economic recession reversed the trend of pro-poor growth that dated back to the early 2000s. Since the recession, there was a rise in...

Using friendship data from Facebook, we study the effects of three aspects of social capital on household financial behavior. We find that the most important measure of social capital in explaining stock market and saving participation is Economic Connectedness, defined as the fraction of one's...

Children represent the largest indirect beneficiaries of the U.S. social welfare system. Yet, many questions remain about the direct benefits of cash aid to children. The current understanding of the impacts of cash aid in the U.S. is drawn primarily from studies of in-kind benefits, tax...

We examine the effects of an unconditional cash transfer on the economic wellbeing (material hardship, ability to meet needs, money on hand, use of friends and family for assistance, and employment) of families and children with very low incomes. We use a parameterized difference-in-differences...

We provide new evidence that cash transfers following the birth of a first child can have large and long-lasting effects on that child's outcomes. We take advantage of the January 1 birthdate cutoff for U.S. child-related tax benefits, which results in families of otherwise similar children...

I discuss recent books offering differing explanations for persistent U.S. poverty. Desmond (2023) argues that aid to low-income Americans is captured by more powerful market actors. I contextualize this concern as about incidence and consider both policies for changing incidence (by changing...