Explore Econ Research Papers

Control Over Resources and Women's Political Empowerment: Evidence from Brazil

Author

Abstract

Brazil's Bolsa Família Programme, a conditional cash transfer paid exclusively to women, raised the female candidacy rate in municipal elections by 2.46 percent relative to the pre-reform mean while producing no detectable effect on the female electoral success rate. The estimates exploit a 2009 reform that generated plausibly exogenous variation in programme expansion across municipalities. Coarsened Exact Matching is combined with a two-way fixed effects difference-in-differences design across more than 5,000 Brazilian municipalities and three election years. Targeted financial resources lower the barriers to political entry for women but cannot overcome the structural determinants of electoral success.

Keywords: Political Economy, Development Economics, Economics of Gender, Cash Transfers

How to Cite: Kong, C. (2026) “Control Over Resources and Women's Political Empowerment: Evidence from Brazil”, UCL Journal of Economics. 5(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.2755-0877.2259

None