ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the reforms in Brazilian income transfer policies for the unemployed of working age during the last decade. It focuses on Bolsa Família, the popular conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme, and the Brasil Sem Miséria plan. The macroeconomic context in which the recent reforms of Brazilian social assistance took place was favourable. Between 2005 and 2010 the Brazilian economy boasted an average growth rate of 4 per cent per annum. This sound economic performance was accompanied by two important factors in the labour market: first, an increase in remunerated formal employment, in both absolute and relative terms of the share of employed workers; and second, the recovery of workers' real income. Bolsa Família is a conditional cash transfer scheme. Such programmes had existed since the middle of the 1990s, not only in Brazil but also in various other Latin American countries.
