El acceso a programas de transferencias de ingreso de la población de menores recursos en Uruguay

The present document gathers the main results of a survey conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estadí­stica (INE). The survey was conducted in the framework of a cooperation agreement between the INE, the Social Development Ministry (MIDES) and Universidad e la República (UDELAR). The aim of this agreement was studying the access to cash transfers programs of sectors of the Uruguayan low income population. In the survey 15% of lower income households were interviewed by Encuesta Contí­nua de Hogares (the Urugayan national household survey) between February and may 2010 (first wave). Under this agreement, the households were interviewed again between October and November 2010 (second wave). Despite noticeable economic growth and significant efforts made in Uruguay in recent years to reduce poverty and extreme poverty, a significant number of households still have incomes below the minimum determined by the National Institute of Statistics, at the time facing hardship in other dimensions of well-being, such as housing, education and access to the health care system. For the purpose of providing new elements for the discussion on the evolution of the welfare and the scope of current policies of direct cash transfers to the most underprivileged sectors, this paper examines the access to social benefits by the Uruguayan 15% lower income population. Also, is a very exploratory analysis on the evolution of the socio-economic situation of recipient households of the cash transfer program Asignaciones Familiares-Plan de Equidad (AFAM-PE), based on the concatenation of the information generated in this study with administrative records of the social security system.