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Deficiency and BPC: what changes in the lives of people assisted?

The aim of this article is to analyze the impact of well-being provoked in the life of the disabled people after the Cash Benefit to Disabled People (BPC). The BPC is a social assistance benefit consisting in an unconditional and monthly transference of the equivalent of a minimum wage, to poor people with deficiency and elders with more than 65 years. The methodology used was a case study with qualitative and quantitative techniques of data collection and analysis. BPC performed interviews guided by a semi-structuralized questionnaire with 30 people with deficiency. The results showed that: (1) BPC is an important mechanism of security of income in the consumption of basic goods of feeding, health treatments and expenses with housing of deficient and its families; (2) disabled people had related the concession of the benefit to the increase of social and financial independence in relation to their families, contributing to expand the idea of autonomy and citizenship; (3) it is an instrument capable of protecting the benefited ones and their families of the situation of social vulnerability result of the poverty, although the mothers of the deficient children leave the work market to take care of their children and do not receive any kind of social protection from the State.

Disability; Continuous cash benefit programme; Impact of well-being; Social protection


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