Since the early 2000s, sustainable livestock intensification (SI) practices have slowly displaced unsustainable beef production in Brazil. Numerous studies have investigated the environmental and economic effects of SI, but the implications for social well-being and rural development are under-explored. This study investigates how a tendency towards livestock SI affects rural well-being in Brazil. We used propensity score matching (PSM) to estimate the effects of SI trends on a rural development index (RDI), poverty rates and other common development metrics of Brazilian microregions. We analysed historical data (10 years) on pasture area and herd size. Based on linear regressions, we assume microregions with a positive slope in herd size and a negative slope in pasture areas are following a SI trend. We found a negative correlation between the contribution of beef production to GDP and RDI across all regions (- 0.201, p-value < 0.001). However, using PSM we found the average effect of the SI trend is positive, with a magnitude of ~4 points in the RDI (95% CI 0.02; 7.74). The results suggest that beef production value does not drive rural development, but microregions following an intensification trend have better rural development than non-intensified regions.