2025 - Edition 87 | December 23

The result of a Technical Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the ministry (MDS), the IMDS report follows the trajectory of more than 11 million children and adolescents since 2005

Hello Leitor,

On its twentieth anniversary, the Bolsa Família Program continues to be a central piece in Brazil's social protection structure. Since its creation, millions of children and adolescents have become part of a generation that grew up under the protection of this policy. Understanding the path of these people in adult life is essential to assess the boundaries and limits of social mobility in the Country.

With this objective, IMDS presents the report "Social Mobility of the First Generation of Bolsa Família Beneficiaries: Trajectories and Dynamics in the Pandemic", the result of the Technical Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between IMDS and the Ministry of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Fight against Hunger (MDS). The study follows the trajectory of 11.6 million children and adolescents who were dependent on the program in 2005. Using administrative records from the Unified Registry, the Bolsa Família payroll, and Emergency Aid (Auxílio Brasil), the work observes where these people are almost two decades later, identifying their links with the social protection network until the year 2024.

The report continues the research agenda started with the article "Social Mobility in Brazil: An analysis of the first generation of beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program", published in 2023. In this study, the analysis of the cohort went up to 2019 and already pointed out that a significant part of the young people had left the social assistance records, with experiences of insertion in the formal labor market. Now, with the extension of the observation window until 2024, it is possible to assess more accurately the resilience of these trajectories in the face of shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Emergency Aid, implemented in 2020 with digital self-declaration mechanisms, revealed that more than 1 million young people in the cohort, even outside CadÚnico in 2019, had accessed the benefit that year. This selective return showed that many of the previous dismissals did not correspond to consolidated stability. The pandemic, therefore, worked as a marker of latent weaknesses in part of the trajectories that, until then, seemed to indicate mobility.

In the following years, the creation of Auxílio Brasil and then the return of Bolsa Família in 2023 partially consolidated the links with the protection network. About 25% of the cohort continued as direct beneficiaries of the program between 2021 and 2024. More than 60% remained outside the system, even after the restructuring of the benefit, the expansion of the amount transferred and the efforts to update the registration. The data show that many of the young people who are disconnected maintain an intermittent relationship with social policy: close to the eligibility line, they access the system in times of instability but remain outside it in contexts of normality.

The study proposes a more dynamic reading of social mobility, recognizing that overcoming poverty does not occur in a linear way. The inputs and outputs of the protection system, often discontinuous, reflect the typical transitions of youth and the effects of critical events on families living at narrow income thresholds. Staying in the program after 2023 may be related, in many cases, to household characteristics, such as the presence of young children (prioritized by the new rules) and the increase in the amounts transferred, which reinforces the incentive to maintain the registration, regardless of the individual economic condition of the young people in the cohort.

By documenting these trajectories based on long-term administrative records, the study contributes to a more realistic view of social mobility in Brazil. The results indicate the importance of follow-up strategies that consider potential vulnerability, and not just poverty measured by income, as an eligibility criterion. Identifying risks before they materialize can be as important as responding to them after they are established.

To all our users, readers and friends of IMDS our wishes for Happy Holidays and a Year full of health, prosperity and achievements. We will be back in January, with the next "IMDS Letter"!

Paulo Tafner

CEO