Demographic factors responsible for income transfers and rural survival strategies in Amazonia: autonomy or dependence?

Abstract

The debate on the effectiveness of access to social benefits as a factor in overcoming poverty and vulnerability is marked by divergent views, ranging from a way of generating autonomy and empowerment to a perpetuation of dependency that nullifies individual capabilities and shifts responsibility to the State. However, there is a gap in this debate: understanding the effects of social benefits considering the demographic dynamics and the specific conditions of rural areas, particularly the households as production units, and their decisions on land use and labor allocation. Therefore, this article aims to evaluate the impact of access to social assistance benefits on the subsistence strategies of rural families, particularly regarding land use decisions and household labor allocation. It also assesses whether and how the demographic composition of families has a mediating effect on this impact. The paper proposes a case study based on a household survey in the municipality of Machadinho, Rondonia, in 2015, and uses a combination of descriptive statistics, tests of differences in means and accumulated probabilities using the Kaplan-Meier estimator of maintenance of rural production with receiving benefits. The results indicate that size and demographic composition are significant in determining both the dynamics of benefits and their relationship with rural subsistence strategies, including food safety investment in rural production, thus reinforcing the importance of benefits as an element of productive autonomy and strengthening individual and collective capacities for households in vulnerable situations.