This paper investigates, in subnational comparative perspective, the impact of local public policies on several indicators of the quality of life, poverty, and inequality. This is a first attempt to investigate the role of the legislative branch in fighting poverty and inequality through targeted transfers, usually seen in derogatory form as pork barrel politics. We assess the potential distributional biases of pork policies and their effect on beneficiaries using up-to-date policy evaluation techniques. The dataset contains over 60,000 observations from all 5500+ Brazilian municipalities for over a decade. We employ matching and longitudinal data analysis techniques and treat pork as exogenous shocks, mapping how they reverberate on social and economic indicators in succeeding years. The results indicate a positive effect of such policies in reducing inequality and alleviating poverty. However, these results are not sustainable over time, suggesting thus a dissipative profile of this kind of inclusion.