We will talk about the Citizens' Basic Income, an unconditional cash transfer scheme paid in a local currency that benefits almost 50% of the 200,000 inhabitants of Maricá, Brazil. We will describe the origins and the evolution of the program, as well as its diffusion to neighboring cities and its influence over national policies. We will also present preliminary results from studies conducted by partner research groups and by our team - including firsthand results from "Building from the Bolsa", a project funded by the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies.
Speakers:
Marc Doussard is a Professor and Head of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois. He is a political economist interested in work, inequality, urban politics and public policy. Professor Doussard's research on these topics dips into many methodological and (especially) disciplinary areas of expertise, including Urban Studies and Urban Planning; Geography; Social Work; and Policy Studies. He ties together these diverse interests by focusing on the linkages between different forms of inequality and, correspondingly, strategies for contesting cities’ foundational inequalities through the political and policy process.
Fabio Waltenberg is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) in Niterói, Brazil, and a researcher at the Center for Studies on Inequality and Development (CEDE-UFF). He holds a bachelor’s and a masters degrees in Economics from the Universidade de São Paulo, and a PhD in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Currently he is a visiting fellow at the Chair on Inequalities at the Brazilian College of Advanced Studies at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, under the supervision of Celia Kerstenetzky, and coordinates the Brazilian team involved in the evaluation of the Basic Income program in Maricá. His research has focused on economic analyses of social policies, with emphasis on education and cash transfer policies.
Jéssica Maldonado is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), with a master's and bachelor's degree in economics from the same university. Currently, she is the lead qualitative analysis researcher in the evaluation project of the Maricá Basic Citizenship Income, a partnership between the Federal Fluminense University and the Jain Family Institute.
