Monthly Money or Windfall Cash: Women's Ownership and the Timing of Cash Benefits in Rural Brazil

Background and purpose: Over the past decade, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become a core policy tool for addressing global poverty. These programs distribute small monthly payments to mothers with low incomes. In exchange for the money, families must comply with conditions, including school attendance and vaccination for children. 41 nations have implemented CCTs, and evaluations have found positive impacts on child health, malnutrition, and education.

At a household level, what is the mechanism of action that allows CCTs to achieve these impacts? Recently, this broad question has inspired a more focused scholarly debate on whether or not the programs can change women’s roles in household decision-making. Little research, however, has examined an important sub-question: the effect of CCTs on women’s ownership of assets inside the household. Do CCTs make women more likely to own durable goods? Control of assets can enable women to invest in children’s health and education, and so the issue of ownership has significant implications for understanding CCT impacts in general.

This paper investigates one aspect of women’s ownership: program timing. CCTs deliver cash on a monthly basis—not in one-time lump sums, which are more easily saved as long-term assets. Does a monthly schedule hinder women’s asset ownership? We examine this issue in Brazil, where the Bolsa Família program has become the world’s largest CCT. Specifically, we take advantage of the fact that rural Brazilian women can receive both Bolsa Família and Salário Maternidade, a lump-sum maternity payment. This paper compares the effect of these two differently-timed programs on women’s ownership.

Methods: Ninety-two semi-structured interviews were conducted with randomly-selected adults in two villages in Northeastern Brazil, and follow-ups were carried out with women receiving cash benefits. Household assets were tallied and life history narratives were elicited. The interviews fit into an 18-month period of ethnography in the villages, based on the extended case method approach. Given the well-known difficulty of defining which person inside a household is the owner of an asset, ethnography served as a resource for understanding household dynamics.

Findings: Respondents reported increases in women’s asset ownership from both programs. However, the assets had different characters. Women typically saved the monthly Bolsa Família money by making small installment payments on household durables—goods like tables and stoves, which are locally understood to be feminine. Women used the one-time maternity payments to buy cattle and fields—goods that are locally understood to be masculine. Thus Bolsa Família reinforced gender stereotypes about asset ownership, while Salário Maternidade overturned these stereotypes.

Conclusion and Implications: In this context, stereotypically-masculine assets are assets that generate income over time, like livestock and fields. By owning these assets, women can control income flows inside the household. Only lump-sum benefits succeeded in reversing the gendered ownership of these assets. Lump sums create a “positive income shock” inside the household, requiring household members to rethink their savings plans. This finding suggests that the timing of cash benefits can affect relations inside the household, ultimately shaping the channels through which CCTs achieve their results.