Focalização em programas de transferência de renda: indicadores para o bolsa família a partir de novos critérios de elegibilidade

Abstract

This dissertation contributes to the recent economic and social debates about the definition of the eligibility criterion of the Bolsa Familia Program (PBF) when verifying the probability of belonging to the target public of individuals enrolled in the Cadastro Unico by April 2015. The proposal was to analyze the degree of focus of the PBF. The targeting indicators were calculated using the criterion currently adopted by the Federal Government and for the alternative criteria studied. Such an alternative eligibility criterion will be based on a score generated using an estimated propensity score using a logit model, whose dependent variable is a dummy that indicates whether the household belongs to the target audience. As explanatory variables will be considered some individual observable characteristics of the registered ones and characteristics related to the location of the families and the infrastructure of the domicile. The results point out that the great penalty of the focus is mainly due to the low coverage of the program, that is, the exclusion errors cause greater impact than the observed leaks. When comparing targeting indicators, it can be noted that for both the current eligibility criterion, based on the declared income, and the alternative criterion, the resources allocated to the program would be sufficient to cover about 70% of the poor population if they were destined correctly. These results suggest that, despite criticism of the form of selection and the institutional design of the program, the use of the income criterion as a means to discriminate against the poor from the non-poor seems to be the most efficient and least expensive way for a large program such as Bolsa Familia.