The program consisted of four components: main benefit package, School Sports Aid, Junior Scientific Initiation Scholarship, and Rural Productive Inclusion Aid (AIPR, acronym in Portuguese). However, only the main benefit package was fully operational and at large scale.

The main benefit package was characterized by a supposedly variable benefit, composed of the benefits listed below. It is worth noting, however, that the Extraordinary Benefit (BEXT, acronym in Portuguese) and the Complementary Benefit (BC, acronym in Portuguese) had the practical effect of making the other benefits irrelevant, since BEXT and BC were available to each beneficiary, guaranteeing a higher income than those that could otherwise be paid depending on the more specific sociodemographic composition of each family. In any case, this form presents the variable AB benefits, as there is some instability on the sources of financing of the BEXT and BC, both supposedly emergency-based or temporary [i].

Benefits that make up the AB main benefit package

[i] The instability regarding the continuity of BEXT and BC is due to the emergency tax arrangements that ensure its sources of financing. BC, for example, was not included in the approved LDO for 2022. These fears, however, have been easing in view of more recent events. On November 21, 2022, Constitutional Amendment No. 126 was approved, providing resources that allow the payment of the BEXT and the BC for a period of 2 years. 

[ii] As result of Provisional Measure No. 1.155 of January 1, 2023, from this date onwards BC has been called Additional Complementary Benefit. Although there was no change in amount or earning criteria, there was a change in the sense of considering this a program that formally integrates the main benefit package. This measure was made possible thanks to Constitutional Amendment No. 126 of November 21, 2022, which freed up fiscal space capable of financing the benefit for a period of 2 years.

The Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger - MDS (which during the 2019-2022 period was designated the Ministry of Citizenship – MC), led the program and independently generated the benefits due to the family composition and degree of poverty, coordinating with CAIXA[iii] to make the payments. The initiative also had the support of subnational governments through SUAS[iv] to register and update the information of potential beneficiaries in the Single Registry. Another important partner was DATAPREV[v], which validated the information declared in the Single Registry along with other administrative records and subsequent selection of beneficiaries.

The “incentives for individual effort and emancipation” (i.e., School Sports Aid, Junior Scientific Initiation Scholarship, and Rural Productive Inclusion Aid - AIPR, acronym in Portuguese) required adherence from each state, in addition to interactions between the MDS divisions responsible for social assistance (under the Special Secretariat for Social Development) and those responsible for sports (under the Special Secretariat for Sports). The Rural Productive Inclusion aid required interaction between the division of MDS that managed the general benefit basket and the one managing the Brazilian Food Security Policy (which includes the Food Acquisition Program (PAA, acronym in Portuguese)). In addition, people benefiting from Rural Productive Inclusion needed to have a valid Brazilian Register of Small-scale Farming (CAF, acronym in Portuguese) or Declaration of Aptitude to Pronaf[vi] (DAF, acronym in Portuguese), both of which are issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAPA, acronym in Portuguese), which classifies families as family producers for the purpose of assistance and agrarian development policies.

In addition, interaction was required with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations, in support of the scholarship for young people with good performance in national scientific competitions) [5]. 
 

State and, above all, municipal governments (through SUAS) responsible for the Single Registry, from where those eligible were automatically selected according to the availability of the program to cover additional beneficiaries and according to context-specific rules of prioritization (for example, coverage quotas for each municipality according to poverty estimates, and prioritization of Traditional and Specific Population Groups – GPTEs and families headed by women.

The program was formally operational as of November 2021, upon approval of Decree No. 10.852, of November 8, 2021. The “incentives for individual effort and emancipation” were not consolidated at scale. 

With the change of government, from January 2023 onwards, the program was discontinued, and in March 2023 the Bolsa Família Program was reinstituted.

See policy brief on the trajectory of the PBF and its relationship with Emergency Aid and Brazil Aid.

Conditional Cash Transfer and additional package (not fully operational) composed of Structured / Institutional Purchases (in addition to the aid that ended up also being forms of Income Transfers).

In the area of education:

• Minimum 60% attendance  for children from 4 (four) to 5 (five) years of age;

• Minimum 75% attendance  for children from 6 (six) to 17 (seventeen) years of age and young people between 18 (eighteen) and 21 (twenty-one) who receive the Family Composition Benefit – Youth (BCJ) and have not yet completed Basic Education;

In healthcare:

• Observance of the health calendar (including vaccination calendar and monitoring of nutritional status) for children up to 7 (seven) years of age.
• Prenatal care for pregnant women [8, 9, 10].

• Exclusive program for poor families (with monthly Per Capita Family Income of up to R$ 210.00).

• After joining the program, the permanence rule allowed the maintenance of the benefit even if the family had its income increased beyond the poverty line, up to a Per Capita Family Income limit 2.5 times higher than the poverty line, for a period of a maximum of two years.

• The program focused on families, but interactions and payment were made directly through a Family Guardian who should preferably be a woman.

• Indigenous people and quilombolas had priority access to the program. 

• Once eligible for the program, the family composition determined the value of the benefit, which varied according to the existence of children, young people, nursing mothers and pregnant women, and included an additional component to ensure that no family remained below extreme poverty. In practice the program operated as if it was a homogeneous benefit because the Extraordinary Benefit (BEXT) and the Complementary Benefit (BC) ensured that no family received less than R$ 600.00 per month.

• The share of beneficiaries by municipality followed poverty estimates prepared by the MDS [11, 12].

The program followed the same protocol that was used by PBF, including:

• State and municipal coverage shares estimated from the estimated poverty prevalence based on the Brazilian Household Sample Survey (PNAD, acronym in Portuguese).

• The application for access to the program requires family records with Single Registry, which is made by municipal governments through the structure of SUAS.

• Upon budget availability to receive new beneficiaries, PBF automatically selects those eligible for registration in the Single Registry. The selection is automatically processed for those with valid registration (i.e., records updated less than two years ago, and reflecting the sociodemographic characteristics of the family).

• The registration of the Single Registry is largely based on self-declared information, including its calculation of income and occupation, although there may be a requirement for supporting documentation of the place of domicile and family composition. 

• The validation of self-declared information to the Single Registry, therefore, does not occur at the time of registration or selection for PBF, but rather a posteriori, as the Single Registry carries out annual cross-references with other administrative records, and people benefiting from PBF whose information that characterizes eligibility, who were questioned by this exercise, have to attend SUAS to provide clarifications. 

• The posteriori validation exercise also serves as an instrument for implementing the program's permanence rule [13, 14].

AB started with an initial coverage of 14.6 million families in November 2021 (or 43.6 million individuals) with successive growth that reached 21.9 million families in February 2023 (or 55.3 million individuals in November 2022). This represents an average monthly coverage of 19 million households between November 2021 and January 2023, and 51.5 million people between November 2021 and November 2022.

Estimated program coverage [15]

The main benefit package followed a structure like that of Bolsa Família and was composed of the following benefits:

• Early Childhood Benefit (BPI), offered to both poor and extremely poor families, in the amount of R$ 130.00 per month per child who is up to 36 months of age.

• Family Composition Benefit (BFC)[18], consists of the following five types of benefit, offered to poor or extremely poor families according to their family composition, with no maximum benefit limit per family: 

  1. Family Composition Benefit – Child (BCC). R$ 65.00 per month per child aged between 3 and 16 years old;

  2. Family Composition – Adolescent Benefit (BCA). R$ 65.00 per month for adolescents aged between 16 and 18 years;

  3. Family Composition Benefit – Youth (BCJ). R$ 65.00 per month for adolescents aged between 18 and 21 years who are enrolled in school or who have already completed basic education;

  4. Family Composition Benefit – Pregnant Woman (BCG). R$ 65.00 per month per pregnant woman;

  5. Family Composition Benefit – Nursing mother (BCN)[19]. R$ 65.00 per month per nursing mother. 

• Benefit for Overcoming Extreme Poverty (BSP), offered only to extremely poor families, in an amount that, added to the total paid by BFC and BPI, guarantees a monthly per capita income greater than R$ 105.00:

  • Extremely poor families eligible for BSP will receive at least R$ 25.00 per person.

  • Extremely poor households whose BPI and BFC benefits are sufficient to overcome the extreme poverty line (i.e., achieve per capita household income of R$ 105.00 per month) did not receive BSP. 

• Transition Compensatory Benefit (BComp), offered to families that were beneficiaries of Bolsa Família to complement the total amount paid by BPI, BFC and BSP, to ensure that the total amount paid to this family is not less than that which it received through Bolsa Família in October 2021:

  • Families that received Bolsa Família and whose total amount paid by the Brazil Aid, including BPI, BFC and BSP, is higher than the total previously paid by Bolsa Família, did not receive the BComp.

• Extraordinary Benefit (BEXT), offered both to poor and extremely poor families, in an amount that, added to the other benefits, ensures that the family receives at least R$ 400.00 per month:

  • Families whose sum of BPI, BCF, BSP and BComp exceeded the total of R$ 400.00 per month did not receive the BE.

  • Until June 2022, it was a complementary benefit to the main benefit package (with expiration date until December 2022), but from July 2022 onwards it becomes an integral part of the main benefit package (including being provided for in the 2023 budget and no longer being released in a disaggregated way in program monitoring data, and entering part of the regular program budget).

• Complementary Benefit (BC), offered to both poor and extremely poor families, in the fixed amount of R$ 200.00 per month per family (originally expected to be paid only until December 2022, but already incorporated as part of the main benefit package as of January 2023)[20].

As previously mentioned, BEXT and BC together guaranteed a monthly benefit of R$ 600.00, subsequently emptying the practical sense of the lower value benefits due to the more specific socioeconomic composition. In effect, BEXT and BC resulted in the AB operating as a non-variable benefit program[22].

In addition to the “main benefit package”, there were also “incentives for individual effort and emancipation”, which include:

• School Sports Aid – offered to students aged 12 to 17 years, members of families benefiting from the Brazil Aid Program, who stand out in the Brazilian School Games. Each student in the family who qualifies for the benefit receives R$ 100.00 per month, and the Head of Household receives a payment of R$ 1,000.00 every year in which one or more of their children achieve prominence in this type of competition.

• Junior Scientific Initiation Scholarship – offered to students from Brazil Aid families who excel in academic and scientific competitions of national scope. Each student in the family who qualifies for the benefit receives R$ 100.00 per month, and the Head of Household receives a payment of R$ 1,000.00 every year in which one or more of their children achieve prominence in this type of competition. 

• Rural Productive Inclusion Assistance (AIPR, acronym in Portuguese) – offers R$ 200.00 per month to rural producers duly accredited with PRONAF (with active DAF or valid alternative document). To receive this benefit the beneficiary needs to ensure that agricultural products to the value of at least 10% of the benefit amount are provided to the PAA [23].

Automatic creation of a Digital Social Savings Account or, in the case of former beneficiaries of the Emergency Aid and PBF beneficiaries that already have this type of account, deposit in a previously existing account. (Former PBF beneficiaries who did not yet have an account would receive the payment through one of the traditional PBF payment methods, namely: a) the Caixa Fácil Account; or withdrawal through the Digital Social Card (which allows withdrawal on Caixa networks, but with no link to any bank account) [20, 21].

Between November 2021 and January 2023, the program spent a total of R$ 126.7 billion on benefit payments to families that are not in suspension [22].

• O Projeto de Lei Orçamentária Anual (PLOA) 2023 previa R$ 105,7 bilhões destinados ao programa Auxílio Brasil, suficientes para pagar benefício médio mensal de R$ 405 a 21,6 milhões de famílias, porém insuficiente para pagar o BC. Em 21 de novembro de 2022 aprovou-se a Emenda Constitucional N. 126, que aumentou o espaço fiscal do governo para cerca de R$ 170 bilhões, permitindo assim o pagamento do BC por período de dois anos, conforme disposto pela Medida Provisória nº 1.155 de 1º de janeiro de 2023. 

Recursos transferidos para famílias beneficiárias do AB que não estão em situação de suspensão (valores nominais)

The 2023 Annual Budget Bill (PLOA, acronym in Portuguese) provided for R$ 105.7 billion allocated to the Brazil Aid program, sufficient to pay an average monthly benefit of R$ 405.00 to 21.6 million families, but insufficient to pay the BC. On November 21, 2022, Constitutional Amendment No. 126 was approved, which increased the government's fiscal space to approximately R$ 170 billion, thus allowing BC to be paid for a two-year period, as provided for in Provisional Measure No. 1.155, of January 1, 2023.

Although there were additional benefits for families with children, with values varying according to different child development cycles, its effect ended up being depleted due to higher-value substitute benefits that did not weigh socioeconomic or demographic differences between different families. 

All the conditionalities of the initiative referred to maternal and child health care, , in addition to minimum school attendance.

The program encouraged and favored female heads of household, contributing to their autonomy by issuing them the card that gives them access to the family benefit. There were also additional benefits for pregnant and nursing women, although, in practice, the guarantee that no family received less than R$ 600.00 per month meant that the difference in variable benefits due to the specific characteristics of the families was lost.

The program entails coordination with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education that enables information sharing, on a regular and automated basis, on school attendance records and prenatal care as well as health and nutritional monitoring of children – as a subsidy for monitoring conditionalities.

The social assistance teams that registered the families also informed the MDS about cases of non-compliance with conditionalities due to the non-existence of a public offer of education and health services, and thus the MDS worked with these sectors to stimulate a greater supply of services.

The components of "incentives for individual effort and emancipation" required coordination with the Ministry of Education and with the MDS department responsible for the promotion of sports. The AIPR component required interaction with the PAA in which the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock was an important implementing partner, along with states and municipalities. 

Although AB was created after the epidemiological peak of Covid, the Extraordinary Benefit and the Complementary Benefit aimed to increase the value of the benefit based on the benefit offered during the Emergency Aid (AE1) and the understanding that the socioeconomic effects of the crisis generated by the pandemic continued to afflict the population, and requiring the continuation of a generous benefit.

1. GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social. 2023. “Auxílio Brasil”. 15 de janeiro de 2023. https://www.gov.br/cidadania/pt-br/auxilio-brasil; 

2. GoB, Congresso Nacional. 2022. LEI N^o 14.342, DE 18 DE MAIO DE 2022. https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2022/lei/l14342.htm.

3. GoB, Congresso Nacional. 2022. LEI N^o 14.431, DE 3 DE AGOSTO DE 2022. https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2022/lei/l14431.htm.

4. GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social. 2023. “Auxílio Brasil”. 15 de janeiro de 2023. https://www.gov.br/cidadania/pt-br/auxilio-brasil.

5. GoB, Congresso Nacional 2022. LEI No 14.342, DE 18 DE MAIO DE 2022. https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2022/lei/l14342.htm.

6. GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social. 2023. Auxílio Brasil.

7. GoB, Congresso Nacional. 2022. LEI No 14.342, DE 18 DE MAIO DE 2022.

8. GoB, Congresso Nacional. 2021. LEI No 14.284, DE 29 DE DEZEMBRO DE 2021. 

9. GoB, Congresso Nacional 2022. LEI No 14.342, DE 18 DE MAIO DE 2022. 

10. GoB, Min. Cidadania 2022. PORTARIA MC No 766, DE 20 DE ABRIL DE 2022.

11.  GoB, Congresso Nacional. 2021. LEI No 14.284, DE 29 DE DEZEMBRO DE 2021. 

12. GoB, Congresso Nacional 2022. LEI No 14.342, DE 18 DE MAIO DE 2022.

13. GoB, Congresso Nacional. 2021. LEI No 14.284, DE 29 DE DEZEMBRO DE 2021. 

14. GoB, Congresso Nacional 2022. LEI No 14.342, DE 18 DE MAIO DE 2022. 

15. GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social 2022.  “Quantidade total de pessoas em famílias beneficiárias do Programa Bolsa Família/Programa Auxílio Brasil”. 13 de outubro de 2022. https://aplicacoes.mds.gov.br/sagi/vis/data3/v.php?q[]=oNOclsLerpibuKep3bV%2BgW5i05Kv2rmg2a19ZXR1ZWumaX6JaV2Jk2CadGCNrMmim7iareyYsK%2BbjMfDmaWjlMnusm%2BiqaGt3nSItJiZysZupbCoyveeqZ22qaPdmrGzV6HG1ZTWXZfCm72Zr7ukm%2BxZsrtXk7jO9hepnL7ubZahtpqg4py2EdifwMKmiqGifcu%2Fo6O6lqfaWY%2B9o6C4gXnLqvYK57aVa5inqeCrrruYTZjWqy3qn8bqbXauqaij5bW9iQ%3D%3D.