People settle for very little, you don't even have to have a government program to stimulate this kind of behavior. My first job as a physician here in Brazil was as a Family Physician in the primary care of the brazilian federal health care system (SUS), a complete catastrophe by itself, in the city of Foz do Iguaçu.
One of my patients then was 28 years old and had 8 kids, she had no job and her husband earned about R$ 400,00/month in "freelance type jobs". When I talked to her about contraceptive methods, she told me she wanted to have a total of 12 kids, because kids "gave her something to do and kept her company". I simply could not imagine then that someone could think like that and how did she support those children. That was when one of my "Community Agents" that were also part of the health system and which lived in the patient's area told me that the neighbors felt pity and always gave her some sugar, some beans, some rice and because of that, she always had just enough so that their children didn't starve to death, but naturally they were extremely poor and lived in horrible conditions.
Now imagine if you have a government program giving any kind of money to people. For many years now, there is such a program and the benefit currently amounts to R$ 190,00/kid. There are endless cases, videos and all sorts of evidence that show that poor women have children because of the idea that "the more children you have, the more benefits you get".
This is simply a stupid idea that stimulates people to keep living in misery and killing any incentive to get out of that situation.
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