This paper introduces cash transfers targeting the poor in an incomplete markets model with heterogeneous agents facing idiosyncratic risk. These transfers change the degree of insurance in the economy and a ect precautionary motives asymmetrically, leading the poorest households to decrease savings proportionally more than their richer counterparts. In a model economy calibrated to Brazil, once the cash transfer program is adopted, wealth inequality and social welfare increase, poverty decreases, while employment and income inequality remain about the same. Imperfect access to nancial markets is important for these results, whereas whether the program is funded with lump sum or distortive taxes is not.

Nesta tese foram comparadas as políticas de combate à pobreza em três países da América Latina: México, Brasil e Peru. Especificamente, o foco esteve nas políticas de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (SAN) e dos Programas de Transferência de Renda Condicionada (PTRC). A pesquisa mostrou o percurso teórico e prático vivenciado por estas políticas destacando que os três países apresentaram um ponto em comum na implantação e execução destas ações: a emergência das chamadas -estratégias de combate à pobrezaII, criadas no intuito de reduzir a pulverização e fragmentação presente no desenho e execução destas ações. Nos três países foram estudadas as políticas de SAN. No México foi analisado o programa -Progresa-Oportunidades- juntamente com as estratégias -Contigo e Vivir MejorII. No Brasil, o programa -Bolsa Família- e a estratégia -Fome Zero-, incluindo menção ao recém-criado programa -Brasil Sem MisériaII No Peru foram analisados o programa -JuntosII e a Estratégia -CrecerII.; The subject discussed in this thesis focused on the comparative analysis of poverty control policies in three Latin American countries Mexico, Brazil and Peru, specifically in the policies of Food and Nutritional Security (SAN) and Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCT). Research has shown the way theory and practice experienced by these policies noting that the three countries had a common point in the implementation and execution of actions to against poverty policies that was the emergence of so-called -strategies for overcoming poverty- created in order to reduce spraying and fragmentation present in the design and implementation of these programs. In Mexico we study the -Progresa-Oportunidades- and the policies of SAN along with strategies -Vivir Mejor and ContigoII. In Brazil studied the -Bolsa Familia- program and policies of SAN...

This paper evaluates the impact of an increase in the value of the cash transfer paid to families by the Brazilian Bolsa Família program. The existence of a similar program in the state of Ceará, Bolsa Cidadão, that increases the value received by a sub-group of families, provides a unique dataset, enabling us to evaluate the effect of a higher value of transfer on the spending of comparable households. There is a significant increase in consumption, but it is smaller than the increment in the income, suggesting that the consumption of the households is not properly declared.

The results of the review do not disappoint. The authors identified more than 120 cash transfer programs that were implemented between 2000 and mid-2009 in Sub-Saharan Africa. These programs have varying objectives, targeting, scale, conditions, technologies, and more. A sizable number of these programs conducted robust impact evaluations that provide important information, presented here, on the merits of cash transfer programs and their specific design features in the African context. The authors present summary information on programs, often in useful graphs, and provide detailed reference material in the appendixes. They highlight how many of the cash transfer programs in Africa that had not yet begun implementation at the time of writing will continue to provide important evaluation results that will guide the design of cash transfer programs in the region. In addition to presenting data and analysis on the mechanics of the programs, the authors discuss issues related to political economy. They highlight the importance of addressing key tradeoffs in cash transfers...

The 2008 "food price crisis" and more recent spikes in food prices have led to a greater focus on policies and programs to cushion their impact on poverty and malnutrition. Estimating the income elasticity of micro-nutrients and assessing how they change during such crises is an important part of the policy debate as it affects the effectiveness of cash transfer and nutritional supplementation programs. This paper assesses these issues using data from two cross-sectional household surveys in Indonesia carried out before and soon after the 1997/98 economic crisis, which led to a sharp increase in food prices. First, the authors examine how the income elasticity of the starchy staple ratio differs between the two survey rounds using non-parametric as well as regression methods. Second, they provide updated estimates of the income elasticity for important nutrients in Indonesia. The analysis finds that (i) summary measures such as the income elasticity of the starchy staple ratio may not change during crises but this masks important differences across specific nutrients; (ii) methods matter -- the ordinary least squares estimates for the income elasticity of micro-nutrients are likely to be misleading due to measurement error bias; (iii) controlling for measurement error...

This paper compares the ex ante simulation of the impacts of conditional cash transfer programs against the ex post estimates of impacts obtained from experimental evaluations. Using data on program-eligible households in treatment areas from the same baseline surveys that are used for experimental evaluations of conditional cash transfer programs in Mexico and Ecuador, the authors use a micro-simulation model to derive ex ante estimates of the impact of the programs on enrollment rates and poverty. The estimates reveal that ex ante predictions of certain impacts of conditional cash transfer programs match up well against the benchmark estimates of ex post experimental studies. The findings seem to support the use of this model to assess the potential impact and cost efficiency of a conditional cash transfer program ex ante, in order to inform decisions about how the program would be designed.

This paper compares for 13 Latin American countries the poverty and inequality impacts of cash transfer programs that are given to all children and the elderly (that is, "categorical" transfers), to programs of equal budget that are confined to the poor within each population group (that is, "poverty targeted" transfers). The analysis finds that both the incidence of poverty and the depth of the poverty gap are important factors affecting the relative effectiveness of categorical versus poverty targeted transfers. The comparison of transfers to children and the elderly also supports the view that choosing carefully categories of beneficiaries is almost as important as targeting the poor for achieving a high poverty and inequality impact. Overall, the findings suggest that although in the Latin American context poverty targeting tends to deliver higher poverty impacts, there are circumstances under which categorical targeting confined to geographical regions (sometimes called "geographic targeting") may be a valid option to consider. This is particularly the case in low-income countries with widespread pockets of poverty.

As of 2007, 29 developing countries had some type of conditional cash transfer program in place, with many others planning or piloting one. However, the evidence base needed by a government to decide how to design a new conditional cash transfer program is severely limited in a number of critical dimensions. This paper presents one-year schooling impacts from a conditional cash transfer experiment among teenage girls and young women in Malawi, which was designed to address these shortcomings: conditionality status, size of separate transfers to the schoolgirl and the parent, and village-level saturation of treatment were all independently randomized. The authors find that the program had large impacts on school attendance: the re-enrollment rate among those who had already dropped out of school before the start of the program increased by two and a half times and the dropout rate among those in school at baseline decreased from 11 to 6 percent. These impacts were, on average, similar in the conditional and the unconditional treatment arms. Although most schooling outcomes examined here were unresponsive to variation in the size of the transfer to the parents...

The Palestinian Authority (PA)- administered Cash Transfer Program (CTP) is considered one of the most advanced cash assistance programs in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Using its sophisticated management information system (MIS), which includes a poverty-targeting database, it provides timely quarterly payments to beneficiary households using a uniform payment modality. The CTP was established, with support from the PA, after a merger between the World Bank-funded Social Safety Net Reform Project (SSNRP) and the European Union (EU)-funded Special Hardship Case (SHC) program in 2010. Since the CTP provided its first payment to households in the Palestinian Territories (PT) that year, the number of beneficiary households has increased by almost 59 percentage reaching almost 100,000 households.

Several developing economies have recently introduced conditional cash transfer programs, which provide money to poor families contingent on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital, such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers. The approach is both an alternative to more traditional social assistance programs and a demand-side complement to the supply of health and education services. Unlike most development initiatives, conditional cash transfer programs have been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness using experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Evaluation results for programs launched in Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Turkey reveal successes in addressing many of the failures in delivering social assistance, such as weak poverty targeting, disincentive effects, and limited welfare impacts. There is clear evidence of success from the first generation of programs in Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua in increasing enrollment rates...

During the past decade, the use of conditional cash transfer programs to increase investment in human capital has generated considerable excitement in both research and policy forums. This article surveys the existing literature, which suggests that most conditional cash transfer programs are used for essentially one of two purposes: restoring efficiency when externalities exist or improving equity by targeting resources to poor households. The programs often meet their stated objectives, but in some instances there is tension between the efficiency and equity objectives. The overall impact of a program depends on the gains and losses associated with each objective.

Unlike most development initiatives, conditional cash transfer programs recently introduced in the Latin America and the Caribbean region have been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness. These programs provide money to poor families, conditional on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital-such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers on a regular basis. Rawlings and Rubio review the experience in evaluating the impact of these programs, exploring the application of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation methods and summarizing results from programs launched in Brazil, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Evaluation results from the first generation of programs in Brazil, Mexico, and Nicaragua show that conditional cash transfer programs are effective in promoting human capital accumulation among poor households. There is clear evidence of success in increasing enrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raising household consumption. Despite this promising evidence...

Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) provide money to poor families contingent upon certain verifiable actions, generally minimum investments in children s human capital such as regular school attendance or basic preventative health care. They therefore hold promise for addressing the inter-generational transmission of poverty and fostering social inclusion by explicitly targeting the poor, focusing on children, delivering transfers to women, and changing social accountability relationships between beneficiaries, service providers and governments. CCT programs are at the forefront of applying new social policy theories and program administration practices. They address demand-side barriers, have a synergistic focus on investments in health, education and nutrition, and combine short-term transfers for income support with incentives for long-run investments in human capital. They also are public sector leaders in program administration, using modern targeting, registering, and monitoring systems along with strategic evaluations. Their impact depends on the supply of quality...

Working from the observation that Latin America countries are developing ideas related to the field of Law and Development, this paper seeks to analyze the development strategies undertaken to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by Argentina, Brazil and Chile during the years 1991-2011. the emphasis is on the particular characteristics present in the articulation of the development policies labeled Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (CCTs); Desde la observación de las estrategias de desarrollo elaboradas por los países de América Latina en el marco de movimiento denominada Law and Development (Derecho y Desarrollo), el presente artículo analiza parte de las estrategias desarrollo tomadas por Argentina, Brasil y Chile con el fin de eliminar la pobreza y reducir la inequidad social durante los años 1991 y 2011. El enfoque principal está dado por la artculación de estos países frente a las políticas de desarrollo económico denominadas Programas de Transferencias Condicionadas (PTC).

As part of the 2006-2011 National Development Plan, the Plurinational State of Bolivia launched two cash transfer programs and one youth labor training program aimed at promoting the accumulation of households’ human capital: the Juancito Pinto Educational Grant, the Juana Azurduy Mother-Child Grant, and my first decent job. The objective of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of the targeting mechanisms utilized in these programs. Based on the information provided by the Ongoing Household Survey, we estimate the mechanisms’ potential inclusion and exclusion errors. The results permit us to suggest that the categorical selection mechanisms used in the three programs are effective in reaching the poorest population, although they present distinct levels of inclusion and exclusion errors associated with both the design and implementation problems of the particular mechanism utilized.

In the past decade, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have become an important component of social policy in developing countries. While the impacts of these programs have been well researched with respect to their effectiveness to achieve intended outcomes, less is known about their impact on private expenditure decisions. This aspect has great policy relevance since changes in private household expenditures can either support or counteract the aim of the programs. This essay investigates the impact of a CCT program on private household expenditure decisions in nutrition, health and education which are seen as principal contributors to child human capital. First, household expenditure behavior under a CCT program is discussed based on Heckman's model on the technology of skill formation as a conceptual framework. The paper shows how intra-household preferences and perceptions on the substitutability or complementarity of investments can impact household resource allocation decisions. Subsequently...

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs give families cash to pay for basic health and school expenses (if children attend school and regularly visit health clinics). CCTs have two main objectives: to increase income and alleviate poverty in the short term, and to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty by increasing human capital. Various situations have led to their creation in different countries. The World Bank (WB) supports CCTs in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle-East and Far East. In 2002, the Bank's Latin American and Caribbean Region and the Mexican government sponsored the first regional workshop on experiences with CCTs.. This article summarizes the lessons of experience in designing and operating CCTs shared by officials, donors and academics at the workshop.

Conditional cash transfer programs are now used extensively to encourage poor parents to increase investments in their children's human capital. These programs can be large and expensive, motivating a quest for greater efficiency through increased impact of the programs' imposed conditions on human capital formation. This requires designing the programs' targeting and calibration rules specifically to achieve this result. Using data from the Progresa randomized experiment in Mexico, this article shows that large efficiency gains can be achieved by taking into account how much the probability of a child's enrollment is affected by a conditional transfer. Rules for targeting and calibration can be made easy to implement by selecting indicators that are simple, observable, and verifiable and that cannot be manipulated by beneficiaries. The Mexico case shows that these efficiency gains can be achieved without increasing inequality among poor households.

This article examines whether the state, through conditional cash transfer programs (CCT), can reduce the poverty and extremely poverty in societies marred by high levels of income concentration. We focus on one of the most unequal countries in the globe, Brazil, and analyze the extent to which this country's CCT program - Bolsa Família (BF, Family Grant) program - is able to improve the life chances of extremely poor beneficiaries, through the three major goals of PBF: First, to immediately end hunger; second, to create basic social rights related to healthcare and education; finally, considering also complementary policies, to integrate adults into the job market. The analysis relies on a quantitative survey with 4,000 beneficiaries and a qualitative survey comprised of in-depth interviews with 38 program's participants from all the regions of the country in 2008, it means that this study is about the five first years of the PBF. In order to answer the research questions, we ran four probit analyses related: a) the determinants of the realization of prenatal care; b) the determinants of food security among BF beneficiaries, c) the determinants that adult BF recipients will return to school, d) the determinants that a BF beneficiary will obtain a job. Important results from the study are: First...

A pobreza, a fome e a desnutrição possuem múltiplos e complexos determinantes. A necessidade de uma renda capaz de garantir o direito humano fundamental à alimentação, essencial para a vida, há muito vem sendo discutida. No Brasil, experiências locais deram suporte à criação de programas nacionais de transferência de renda com condicionalidades. Este estudo teve por objetivo analisar de modo qualitativo, aspectos da percepção e prática dos atores envolvidos direta ou indiretamente nos programas Bolsa Escola, Bolsa Alimentação e Cartão Alimentação em nível nacional e estadual. Realizou-se entrevistas com gestores e informantes-chaves, além de análise de Atas de Conselhos e de pronunciamentos de parlamentares no Congresso. As metas dos programas indicam uma aparência universalizante, porém sua essência mostrou-se fragmentada e seletiva entre os já focalizados. Apesar de relevantes na redução da pobreza, esses programas deveriam ser articulados e intersetoriais, reunindo diversas ações em diferentes áreas para conseguir melhorar a qualidade de vida de seus beneficiários, pois isoladamente não são capazes de solucionar a pobreza e a fome.; Causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition are multiple and complex. Current and past discussions promote the idea of an income able to guarantee the human right to adequate food...