Résumé

Analyses several compensatory food security programmes implemented in Brazil and discusses their design and results. As the object of analysis, we chose the federal programme entitled PRODEA and a highly capillary State programme called Cesta do Povo ("People's Foodbasket"). The underlying proposal is that current programme designs are ineffective and inefficient and that a direct income transfer to the poor population would have a greater redistributive impact, in addition to fostering higher levels of economic efficiency.