Since the late 1990s, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have been broadly disseminated as one of the best practices in social protection. Brazil has been a pioneer in this area and today has one of the largest CCTs in the world, covering 26 per cent of the population. Created by the government at the end of 2003, Bolsa Família stemmed from a reform of previous programmes that had been in place since the beginning of 2000. The debate about income security and cash transfers in Brazil, however, started much earlier. (…)