The effects of emergency government cash transfers on beliefs and behaviours during the COVID pandemic: Evidence from Brazil.

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the impacts of emergency cash-transfers on individuals' social distancing behaviour and beliefs about COVID-19. We focus on the impacts of "Auxilio Emergencial" (AE): a large-scale cash-transfer in Brazil targeting low-income individuals who were unemployed or informally employed during the pandemic. To identify causal effects we exploit exogenous variation, arising from the AE design, in individuals' access to the cash-transfer programme. Using data from an online survey, our results suggest that eligibility to the emergency cash transfer led to a reduced likelihood of individuals contracting COVID-19, likely to have been driven by a reduction in working hours. Moreover, the cash transfer seems to have increased perceptions about the seriousness of coronavirus, while a

SUBMITTER: de Leon FLL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9968470 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature