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This paper evaluates the impact of land reforms on household agricultural investments, livelihood strategies, and income levels in Brazil. Given the persistence of rural poverty in Northeast Brazil and the existence of both land and credit market failures, land reforms remain important policy tools for alleviating poverty and increasing growth. This paper evaluates the impact of the recent National Program of Land Credit, a controversial market-assisted land reform program that provides access to land through private land markets. Household-level panel data covering similar beneficiary and control groups allows for identification using both propensity score weighting and difference-in-difference methodologies. The evidence indicates that the Land Credit successfully transitions households into agriculture, with land holdings and investments increasing as a result of the program. As with many earlier land reform programs in Latin America, the new wave of market-assisted land reforms does not increase access to private credit. While land reforms have the potential to drive redistribution, poverty reduction, and growth, these findings suggest that ensuring greater access to credit, irrigation, and higher return economic activities remains important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines the relationship between the employment of children and their mothers, with the aim of informing discussion on efforts to reduce child labor in Brazil. The analysis builds on the largely separate literatures on children’s time use and mothers’ work in two ways—by examining characteristics of employment which are often not available in survey data, and by modeling both children’s work and mothers’ employment. The results suggest that the relationship between children’s and mothers’ work is complex, with substantial evidence of positive correlation. The findings are consistent with the argument that anti-poverty programs that target women’s employment could result in increased child labor. This possibility warrants further analysis in order to better inform policy regarding child labor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We propose two indexes to account for the vulnerability related to COVID-19. • The northern and northeastern regions of Brazil have the highest degree of vulnerability from exposure to COVID-19. • The Indigenous population is the most vulnerable to infection with COVID-19 and is the most impoverished monetarily. • The Brown and Black populations are also at a disadvantage compared to the White and Asian groups. • Most states with the highest vulnerability from exposure to COVID-19 have also had the largest increase in death rates. This paper aims to show how much and in which way people in Brazil are deprived in terms of indicators directly related to the capacity to prevent and recover from infection with COVID-19. We use the Alkire-Foster (AF) method and a fuzzy-set approach as complements to measure multidimensional poverty within the context of the coronavirus pandemic. We propose two pandemic-specific indexes to account for the vulnerability related to the capacity to prevent infection with and to recover from the disease. The outcomes reveal structural deprivations in the country and considerable inequality among regions and ethnic groups. Rank correlation analyses suggest that the proposed indexes can trace the trends in increasing infection and a higher mortality rate in vulnerable regions. Compared to headcount ratio results, the fuzzy measures have more precise outcomes and are better able to capture the evolution in mortality patterns. Our empirical evidence offers an additional warning that the pandemic responses need to prioritize the most vulnerable groups and reinforces the need for coordinated national action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We verified that infrastructure negatively affects the levels of household poverty in Brazil. • These effects are strengthened when infrastructure quality and access are greater. • Our results also indicate that there are important spatial heterogeneities in household poverty. • Infrastructure policies should take into account the heterogeneities of the infrastructure in the regional scope. Many scholars have highlighted the role of infrastructure investments in promoting economic growth along with poverty reduction and social inclusion. Developing economies show substantial discrepancies in terms of infrastructure in the rural–urban, regional and income dimensions. These disparities may be reinforcing a social and economic framework marked by a large portion of the population living in poverty. In a scenario characterized by immense regional and income heterogeneities, the present study aims to evaluate the effect of infrastructure investments on household poverty in Brazil. In addition, we verify whether these effects vary according to infrastructure characteristics such as provision, quality and access. The analysis is based on detailed household microdata from the Demographic Census and infrastructure variables at the municipal and state levels, captured from a variety of data sources. An additional contribution of the paper is the novel application of multilevel logistic models to investigate the relationship between infrastructure and poverty at household, municipal and state levels. Our results demonstrate negative effects of the infrastructure provision on poverty. These effects, in turn, are strengthened when infrastructure quality and access are greater, which allows us to infer about the importance of public policies aimed at achieving lower inequalities in access to basic sanitation, Internet, transportation, telephone services and electricity. These policies should also take into account the infrastructure heterogeneities at the regional level, since such heterogeneities have been important in explaining household poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]