This research aims to understand how families attended by the Childlike Work Eradication Program live and how they are influenced by it. The research is based on an extensive field work. For that, the argumentation moved around two analytical approaches. In first place, it is showed the effectiveness of direct income transfer programs for the poorest families. In exchange these families have to keep their children and teenagers in school, resulting in higher school attendance. In second place, it is showed that social programs focused on compensatory tendencies do not favor the families' autonomy, in comparison to emancipator tendencies. Compensatory tendencies programs actually insert the families into a critical permanent dependency, which can affect future generations.
family; social policies; childlike work; poverty