Impacts of Bolsa Familia Program on multidimensional poverty

«Poverty» is a multidimensional concept dealing with families deprived in more contemporaneous capability deprivations. Interlinkages between deprivations can generate a poverty status that can prevent families from escaping disadvantage. In this sense, human rights-based policies can tackle multidimensional poverty, due to the integrated structure of these programs that target different dimensions contemporaneously. In this respect, this longitudinal quasi-experimental analysis attempts to inspect the impact of a human rights-based policy, the Bolsa Familia, on a multidimensional poverty index for least poor and vulnerable families. The results indicate that this policy affects poverty status for the previous two groups and influences the intensity of poverty of Brazilian families. Furthermore, this policy has a positive impact on the domains Standards of Living, and Health. Moreover, the Bolsa Familia has a positive effect on almost all the dimensions within the Active and Community Life domain, but there are mixed results for the Education domain.