Gabriel Leite Mariante

Thrilled to have my research feature at @unu-wider.bsky.social’s amazing WIDERAngle blog!

Brazil's Bolsa Familia - the world's largest cash transfer programme - does not discourage work. Instead, it increases women's employment by helping them overcome barriers to enter the labour force 👇

A group of young girls sit at a table, smiling and interacting, with a blog headline about Brazil’s cash transfer program and women's employment overlaid on the image.

💼 Can cash transfers empower women without disadvantaging men?

Gabriel Leite Mariante analyses how Brazil’s largest unconditional cash transfer program boosts women's employment while supporting men too. A must-read before #WIDERDevConf2025!

Read more: go.unu.edu/72HTH

Thanks, Rodrigo!!

Excited to share that, following this year's academic job market, I will be joining CUNEF @cunef.bsky.social, in Madrid, as an Assistant Professor in Economics starting next Fall!

Very thankful to all my friends, colleagues and supervisors at
the LSE, and looking forward to the next stage

O Ministério do Desenv. Social publica todo mês o Boletim Avalia, importante iniciativa divulgando estudos sobre políticas públicas brasileiras.

Este mês, tive o prazer de contribuir com minha pesquisa de PhD sobre o efeito do Bolsa Família no emprego formal:

aplicacoes.mds.gov.br/sagi/pesquis...

Excelente matéria da @tcarran.bsky.social da @bbcbrazil.bsky.social para a qual tive o prazer de contribuir através da minha pesquisa de doutorado

Em suma: não, o BF não desincentiva o trabalho de beneficiários, mas sim ajuda mães com crianças pequenas a superarem obstáculos para entrada no mercado

Can cash transfers increase labour supply? It depends on who gets it and where Gabriel Leite Mariante is a PhD candidate in Economics at the LSE. He works in Development Economics, focussing on social protection, labour markets and gender inequality in low- and middle-income …

Studying Brazil's Bolsa Família program, @leitemariante.bsky.social finds that unconditional cash transfers boost formal employment among women by 7% over two years, while men's employment remains unaffected.
www.econthatmatters.com/2025/02/can-...

Thanks to the @econthatmatters.bsky.social team for featuring my job market paper!

The study finds that, instead of discouraging work, Brazil's national cash transfer actually allows mothers to join the labour force, and that this effect can be complemented by local public good provision 👇

The importance of parenthood for gender inequality around the world The differential impact of parenthood on the employment of mothers relative to fathers – the child penalty – is a universal phenomenon, but with varying magnitudes. New evidence across 134 countries s...

Thrilled to see the Child Penalty Atlas featured in @voxdev.bsky.social! Check out the main findings from our Atlas below 👇

Thankful for everyone involved in this fascinating project, and super excited for the next on this important agenda!

voxdev.org/topic/labour...

The fraction of gender inequality explained by child penalties varies systematically with economic development.

In LICs, child penalties tend to represent a small fraction of gender inequality. But as economies develop, child penalties become the key driver of gender inequality:

There's a strange development happening in the #EconJobMarket this year: av. interview invites per job is *way* down on previous years. Anyone know what could explain this?

🙌 Extremely honoured to be one of the recipients of this year's EEA/UniCredit Foundation Best JM Paper Award!

I'm thankful to the scientific committee, and to my advisors and colleagues at the LSE.

My paper is available at: gleitemariante.com/research

Great summary of key recent learnings from empirical work in DevEcon 👇

Last but not least: huge thanks to my fantastic advisors Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess and Camille Landais, and to all my colleagues at the LSE! (13/13)

Home Gabriel Leite Mariante (he/him)

Please reach out if you are interested and want to discuss more! I will also be presenting the paper at the upcoming European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society in Palma (Dec 16-18). More info on my research on website: www.gleitemariante.com (12/13)

To sum up: a large unconditional cash transfer in Brazil increases women's employment by allowing them to pay for kid's schooling items, and to free up time for work. The effect is larger in poorer areas and has complementarities with local public good provision. (11/13)

I interact this discontinuity in public spending with the transfer: I compare the effect on employment for people who live just to the right vs just to the left of the "jump". The result: the effect is entirely driven by people in areas who receive more funds to education (10/13)

This points towards the relevance of supply-side complementarities. To causally measure that, I take advantage of discontinuities in municipal education budgets, generated by the rules allocating public funds to Brazil’s 5k+ municipalities: (9/13)

Next, I explore geographical variations across Brazil’s extremely unequal economy. I estimate the effect separately for the 500+ micro-regions, and find that the impact is bigger in areas that are poorer, but have more public spending in education and health. (8/13)

This shows women use the transfer to pay for kid's schooling, and free up time for paid work. These expenditures are mainly on fixed costs like school material, uniform and after-school activities, which can be a big share of their budget - up to 20% of hh income. (7/13)

What drives the results? Using surveys on expenditure, work availability and school enrolment, I show that recipients are: 1. more likely to spend on kid's education, 2. more likely to have kids enrolled in school, and 3. less likely to report being unavailable to work (6/13)

The result is striking: women increase formal employment by 7.6%, but there's no significant effect on men (5/13)

In 2014, the government expanded its main unconditional cash transfer – part of Bolsa Familia - by increasing the income threshold for eligibility. I compare what happened to the employment of people who became eligible vs people who "just" missed it. (4/13)

This suggests the effect depends on whether people are facing constraints that keep them out of work.

In Brazil, there is a clear gender divide in these constraints: women are 3x more likely to report being unavailable to work than men, overwhelmingly due to caring duties (3/13)

Cash transfer programmes are effective at short-term poverty alleviation – but what is their impact on labour supply? Unclear - on one hand, it can be negative via an income effect; on the other, it can be positive by reducing barriers to work (e.g. funding childcare). (2/13)

🚨 Excited to share my job market paper!

“Cash transfers and women’s labour supply: evidence from the world’s largest programme” (drive.google.com/file/d/1ksDE...)

It has been awarded the EEA/Unicredit Foundation’s Best JMP Award.

A thread summarising my findings 👇: (1/13)

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against women is a major public health and inequality concern. It's not clear what causes it or how to reduce it. Gaby Deschamps' JMP considers that IPV is positively correlated with motherhood, and asks if we can understand why. www.gabrieladeschamps.com/research

We still have a relatively poor understanding of the relationship between evidence and policy. Program evaluation in particular is often motivated by a desire to make policy better. But how effective is program evaluation itself?Michelle Rao's JMP tackles this question. www.michellerao.com/research