Luiz Guilherme de Oliveira Santos

Throughout the more than twenty years of history, the Programa Nacional para o Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF) has provided several works in the literature, given its importance to the family farmer. Many of them seek to understand the impacts caused by PRONAF on growth and economic development. However, some studies attempt to explore the relation of cause and effect between rural credit granted by the program and income variables. Those who presented this proposal contradicted - in part or in full - the empirical evidence of similar work for other branches of the economy. For this reason, this dissertation aims to understand the causal relationship between PRONAF and the income of potential family farmers and to estimate the effects of the government credit program for income, through panel modeling, between 2004 and 2015, for all Brazilian Federative Units. The results indicate Granger's causality in terms of income credit, and the estimated panel coefficients show a positive PRONAF effect on the incomes of potential family farmers selected by the PNAD.