Mostly summarized from Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, 5th Ed.
PART 9 The Real Economy in the Long Run
Chapter 25 of 36 Production and Growth
Section 14 of 23
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Brazil Pays Parents to Help Poor Be Pupils, Not Wage Earners - By Celia W. Dugger
Vandelson Andrade, 13, often used to skip school to work 12-hour days on the small, graceful fishing boats that sail from the picturesque harbor here.
His meager earnings helped pay for rice and beans for his desperately poor family.
But this year he qualified for a small monthly cash payment from the government his mother receives on the condition he shows up in the classroom.
"I can't skip school anymore," said Vandelson, whose hand-me-down pants were so big the crotch ended at his knees and the legs bunched up around his ankles.
"If I miss one more day, my mother won't get the money."
This year, Vandelson will finally pass the fourth grade on his third try - a small victory in a new breed of social program spreading swiftly across Latin America.
It is a developing country version of American welfare reform.
To break the cycle of poverty, the Brazilian government gives the poor small cash payments in exchange for keeping their children in school and taking them for regular medical checkups.
"I think these programs are as close as you can come to a magic bullet in development," said Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit research group in Washington.
"They're creating an incentive for families to invest in their own children's futures.
Every decade or so, we see something that can really make a difference, and this is one of those things."
…
Antonio Souza, 48, and Maria Torres, 37, are raising seven children in a mud hut a couple hills away from the Andrades.
Every member of the family is sinewy and lean.
The parents cannot remember the last time the family ate meat or vegetables.
But their grant of $27 a month makes it possible to buy rice, sugar, pasta and oil.
Mr. Souza and Ms. Torres, illiterate believers in the power of education, have always sent their children to school.
"If they don't study, they'll turn into dummies like me," said their father, whose weathered, deeply creased face broke into a wide smile as he surveyed his bright-eyed daughters, Ana Paula, 11, and Daniele, 8, among them.
"All I can do is work in the fields."
His wife said proudly: "There are fathers who don't want their children to go to school.
But this man here has done everything he could to send his children to school."
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illiterate believers in the power of education
kyōiku no chikara no monmō shinja
教育の力の文盲信者
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