When Payouts Pay Off: Conditional Cash Transfers and Voting Behavior in Brazil 2002–10

Abstract

EmpresasThis article estimates the electoral effects of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in three presidential elections in Brazil. It analyzes municipal-level electoral results and survey data and employs matching techniques to reduce causal inference problems typical of observational studies. Results show that CCTs are associated with increased performance by the incumbent party presidential candidate in all three elections but that these effects have been reaped by incumbents from different parties. It also shows that CCTs have had no discernible impacts on party identification and the performance of incumbent parties in legislative elections. Together, these findings suggest that CCTs are significant in the short run, but lack the capacity to induce substantial long-term voter realignments. as well as anonymous reviewers for very constructive suggestions.Brazilian cities of Campinas and Brasilia began making cash payments to low-income families that formally agreed to a series of conditions, the most important of which were keeping children in school and regularly visiting a doctor (Amaral and Ramos 1999; World Bank 2001). Today, CCTs are present in dozens of countries, and large-scale national-level programs such as the Mexican Progresa/Oportunidades and the Brazilian Bolsa Escola/Bolsa Família cover millions of poor families and have become important pillars of their countries' social protection systems (Fiszbein et al. 2009).CCTs are an ideally suited setting in which to evaluate effects of social policies. As the most important policy innovation in the developing world in decades, CCTs are high-profile programs, providing clear individualized monetary benefits to a well-defined population. Although new, CCTs have now existed long enough so that their electoral effects over several elections can be examined, providing us with empirical leverage on the issue of long-term effects of social policy. Finally, CCTs are often

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