The conditionalities of the Bolsa Família Program, such as the requirement of school attendance and monitoring in the health network, aim to strengthen the development of children and adolescents served by the program. Alongside the income transfer, these requirements seek to create the conditions for the new generation of beneficiaries to access better opportunities in the future.
IMDS developed the study "The relationship between conditionalities and the social mobility of beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program", under the Technical Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Fight against Hunger (MDS). Published in August 2025 in the series Cadernos de Estudos – Desenvolvimento Social em Debate, the study is available at this link and uses administrative microdata from the Unified Registry and the Conditionality System (Sicon) to shed light on the role of these requirements in the trajectory of young beneficiaries.
A first important result concerns the monitoring of conditionalities. Although more than 90% of the monitored families met the required commitments, only about 60% of the children and adolescents between 6 and 17 years of age had information registered in the system in all the periods in which they should have had. That is, once monitoring occurs, most comply with what is requested; However, monitoring often does not happen continuously.
This coverage varies greatly between municipalities. In general, monitoring rates are higher in the South and Southeast regions, especially in coastal and larger municipalities, which have more structured education and health networks. In the North and in areas of the interior of the Northeast, the records are more flawed, especially in small and rural municipalities. These contrasts indicate that the scope of policy monitoring is linked to the institutional capacity of local entities.
The second part of the study follows young people born in 1999 who were beneficiaries of Bolsa Família between the ages of 13 and 17, analyzing their situation in 2023, at the age of 24. The econometric analysis seeks to understand whether the fulfillment of educational conditionalities is associated with differences in the trajectories of these young people.
The results show that compliance with conditionalities is associated with a shorter stay in the Bolsa Família Program at 24 years of age, especially among women. In the case of men, there is no significant association with the exit from poverty, and the probability of remaining in the Unified Registry is even slightly higher.
