Murilo Fahel

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was developed by the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) in 2010. In this sense, the index seeks to overcome the monetarist-dimensional perspective and establish multidimensional-based indicators of health, education and standard of living. The concept of multidimensionality is anchored on the theory of poverty and human development elaborated by the Indian economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s. The methodology used for the modeling of this study is based on Alkire and Foster (2011) and analyzes the incidence and intensity of poverty.  The purpose of this paper  focuses on the application of the MPI in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and uses the Household Sample Survey produced by João Pinheiro Foundation (FJP) in 2009, 2011 and 2013. The results indicate that  the MPI is low, 0.0329 (2009), 0.0226 (2011) and 0.0155 (2013), indicating there is a tendency for decreasing along the years.

Key words
Multidimensional Poverty Index, Incidence, Intensity , Minas Gerais,  Brazil

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), as adopted
by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
was developed by Oxford Poverty & Human Development
Initiative (OPHI) since 2010 in accordance with the
new international analytical paradigm of the poverty
phenomenon, i.e. overcoming the monetarist-dimensional
perspective and establishing multidimensional-
-based indicators of health, education and standard
of living. The methodology used for the modeling
of this study is based on Alkire and Foster (2011) and
analyzes the incidence and intensity of poverty, i.e.
the percentage of poor individuals and the average
distance that these individuals are from the situation
of non-poverty. Given the theoretical and methodological
assumptions mentioned above, the purpose of this
paper focuses on the application of the MPI in the state
of Minas Gerais and uses the Household Sample Survey
produced by João Pinheiro Foundation (FJP) in 2009
and 2011. The results indicate that Minas Gerais has
an important incidence of multidimensional poverty
of 8.33% for 2009 and 6.06% for 2011, reflecting a
significant reduction, and a relatively stable intensity
of 38.94% (2009) and 37.37% (2011). The disaggregated
results by administrative regions indicate a significant
social contrast between rich regions, located along
the central-south axis, and poor regions, along the
north-east axis of the state.

This paper estimates the spillover effect on education of the Conditioned Income Transfer Programs, specifically the ProgramaBolsaFamília (PBF) on the Public Education Network of the city of Belo Horizonte (Brazil). This treatment impacts are evaluated through the Propensity Score Matching (PSM)methodology.  We use the Programa de Avaliação da RedePública de EducaçãoBásica (PROEB) database that is run by SIMAVE on the 2007 to 2010 period for the 5th and 9th grades of Elementary School and the 12th grade of High School. Although not following the same individual across time we are apt to compare them within the years. We support our thesis on the basis that the PSM classify each treated individual with respect to his intrinsic characteristics to his not treated pares, enabling us to treat them as a representative individual of their class. The beneficiaries of this program have had their scholar proficiency on Portuguese negatively affected for each analyzed grade differently. Some evidences showed that the program had a negative impact on school failure for students attending the 9thand 12th grades while this pattern could not be observed for the 5th grade. Other researchers, who conducted a similar study with the 2007 database, showed that student’s attendance was positively related with the PBF. In other words, the PBF increases student’s attendance since it is one of the programs conditionality. However, time spent on school does not indicate an improvement on the student’s attendance and proficiency.  Another important outcome is the impact within the grades in the same year, on which we found a worsening on the indicators from the 5th to the 9th grade and the best performance on the 12th. This fact can reflect 9th grade students disinterest on school matters, suggesting that they are keener to acquire a position on the labor market. In spite of the negative effects, we can observe that the coefficient of the net effect (ATT) has decreased over the years and grades for the 5th and 12th grades, indicating that the survivor on the program is affecting positively student’s proficiency. This depicts a long term spillover effect despite the finding that the beneficiaries’ background is deficitary in relation to the non-beneficiaries due to theirs exposition to a socio-economic situation marked by a higher vulnerability.
Key-Words: Programa BolsaFamília, Spillover Effect, Survivor on the Program, Scholar Proficiency, School Attendance, Belo Horizonte.

Participatory Budgeting of Belo Horizonte (BH-OP) as a tool of public administration to the planning and execution of part of the municipal budget is configured as an innovation of contemporary democracy. Addressing the OP from that perspective, this paper proposes a debate around the implementation of the OP-BH polymorphic ambience of a public deliberation on the induction of new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its impact on share gains policy of the local population. The focus of this analysis rests on an innovative new tool available to the OP-BH: the operationalization of the Digital Participatory Budget (OP-Digital). E-democracy is therefore the strategy “right” for the current time of OP-BH, reducing political patronage? What is the synergy between the exercise of democratic practice, the use of electronic media and participatory process to strengthen the quality of democracy in that it increases the interaction between the citizen and the executive branch? With use of secondary data and interviews with municipal managers and the population of the city of Belo Horizonte, anchored by a literature review. The prospect is that this work will contribute to better defining the concept of political participation and the relationship between the executive and local civil society. The findings indicate a qualitative and quantitative expansion of popular participation in decision-making budget and an important contribution to the model of political communication, along the lines of a "digital democracy", in which the process of voicing the concerns of civil society and the mechanisms social control are expanded significantly. Still indicates the importance of the bureaucratic apparatus to establish feedback to the people, effecting the interactive process maximized by these digital tools.
KEY WORDS: Digital Participatory Budgeting, Participatory Democracy, Public Deliberation, Belo Horizonte, Political Clientelism.

This article discusses the impacts of Bolsa Família Program (PBF) on school enrollment of beneficiaries between 6 and 17
years old in the state of Minas Gerais.The method used in the investigation wasPropensity Score Matching that consists
of selecting and comparing a control group and a treatment group that differ with respect to observable variables only in the fact of receiving the benefit or not.The survey noted that the PBF actually increases the enrollment of beneficiaries,especially of adolescents between 15 and 17 years, blacks, residents of rural
areas, boys and young men - groups with traditionally higher rates of repetition and dropout.

Key Words: Bolsa Família Program, school enrollment, Propensity Score Matching, Minas Gerais.

This research investigates the access levels to healthcare services across the social and occupational strata in Brazil in the years 1998 and 2003. The stratification of that access creates a picture of inequalities in healthcare, whose origin lies in the historical inequalities originated by the social and occupational structure existent then in the country, resulting in the production of poverty and social exclusion indicators highly unfavorable to the population strata exhibiting low socioeconomics levels. By the analysis of the emergency and development of the welfare state in Brazil, since the 1920s, we draw a parallel between social and healthcare policies developed by the State, demonstrating a convergence in the sense of its conservative-corporative character, with regressive and stratifying tendencies. From that brief historic-political contextualization emerges the central argument of the present investigation, which claims that the universalization commended for the Sistema Único de Saúde (Unique Health System) - SUS promulgated by 1988’s Federal Constitution, is not enough for reversing that corporative-stratified assistance model inherited by the State, maintaining a scenario of iniquities in the access to healthcare services.  In order to test that hypothesis, data from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra Domiciliar (National Research by Household Sampling) - PNAD concerning the years 1998 and 2003 were used, containing supplements on the access and use of health services collect by the application of multi-varied statistical model like the Binomial Logistic Regression. The analytical frame for operationalizing the investigative hypothesis is based on Andersen (1968) behavioral model, which defines predisposing and enabling factors and healthcare needs the individuals' attributes in the induction of the search for healthcare services. The results point out to the coexistence of the public healthcare system and the private natured supplemental system, creating an assistance duality marked by strong socio-demographic, economical, occupational and territorial stratification. The dual model fosters the access expansion, as much in the private area, intermediated by the coverage of healthcare plans strongly associated to the socio-economic status of the occupational strata; as in the public area with the focused reduction of health inequalities. Nonetheless, the stratification of access to healthcare services, besides reproducing the social and occupational structural inequalities found in Brazilian society, evidences the contradictions between the poor and the rich; as well as between the formal and informal workers; civil servants and private sector workers, evidencing a picture of inequalities on the access to health in the country, putting on the spot the debate on the proposition of the universalization of clientele and costless of the access commended for SUS.


Key Words: Inequalities in health,  access to health services, SUS and  additional health system, stratified-corporate and universal care models, health policies, social and occupational strata,  PNADS 1998 and 2003, Brazil.