Thanks, Rodrigo!!

Last but not least: huge thanks to my fantastic advisors Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess and Camille Landais, and to all my colleagues at the LSE! (13/13)

Please reach out if you are interested and want to discuss more! I will also be presenting the paper at the upcoming European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society in Palma (Dec 16-18). More info on my research on website: www.gleitemariante.com (12/13)

To sum up: a large unconditional cash transfer in Brazil increases women's employment by allowing them to pay for kid's schooling items, and to free up time for work. The effect is larger in poorer areas and has complementarities with local public good provision. (11/13)

I interact this discontinuity in public spending with the transfer: I compare the effect on employment for people who live just to the right vs just to the left of the "jump". The result: the effect is entirely driven by people in areas who receive more funds to education (10/13)

This points towards the relevance of supply-side complementarities. To causally measure that, I take advantage of discontinuities in municipal education budgets, generated by the rules allocating public funds to Brazil’s 5k+ municipalities: (9/13)

Next, I explore geographical variations across Brazil’s extremely unequal economy. I estimate the effect separately for the 500+ micro-regions, and find that the impact is bigger in areas that are poorer, but have more public spending in education and health. (8/13)

This shows women use the transfer to pay for kid's schooling, and free up time for paid work. These expenditures are mainly on fixed costs like school material, uniform and after-school activities, which can be a big share of their budget - up to 20% of hh income. (7/13)

What drives the results? Using surveys on expenditure, work availability and school enrolment, I show that recipients are: 1. more likely to spend on kid's education, 2. more likely to have kids enrolled in school, and 3. less likely to report being unavailable to work (6/13)

The result is striking: women increase formal employment by 7.6%, but there's no significant effect on men (5/13)

In 2014, the government expanded its main unconditional cash transfer – part of Bolsa Familia - by increasing the income threshold for eligibility. I compare what happened to the employment of people who became eligible vs people who "just" missed it. (4/13)

This suggests the effect depends on whether people are facing constraints that keep them out of work.

In Brazil, there is a clear gender divide in these constraints: women are 3x more likely to report being unavailable to work than men, overwhelmingly due to caring duties (3/13)

Cash transfer programmes are effective at short-term poverty alleviation – but what is their impact on labour supply? Unclear - on one hand, it can be negative via an income effect; on the other, it can be positive by reducing barriers to work (e.g. funding childcare). (2/13)