¿Por qué algunos programas sociales tienen éxito y otros no? Porque las políticas públicas no se diseñan y ejecutan en el vacío: son parte fundamental del juego político. Con este libro se intenta ayudar a entender cómo funciona el proceso decisorio en la realidad analizándolo con un nuevo lente metodológico en el que se combinan el análisis de redes sociales y el de economía política. Se emplean estos instrumentos para mostrar cómo pueden ser aplicados para examinar casos concretos de programas sociales en la región. Se espera que los hallazgos de esta investigación contribuyan a entender los resultados de las políticas públicas, así como a un mejor diseño operativo y a una ejecución más eficiente de los programas sociales en América Latina.

Workers' remittances have become a major source of financing for developing countries and are especially important in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is at the top of the ranking of remittance receiving regions in the world. While there has been a recent surge in analytical work on the topic, this book is motivated by the large heterogeneity in migration and remittance patterns across countries and regions, and by the fact that existing evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean is restricted to only a few countries, such as Mexico and El Salvador. Because the nature of the phenomenon varies across countries, its development impact and policy implications are also likely to differ in ways that are still largely unknown. This book helps fill the gap by exploring, in the specific context of Latin America and Caribbean countries, some of the main questions faced by policymakers when trying to respond to increasing remittances flows. The book relies on cross-country panel data and household surveys for 11 Latin American countries to explore the development impact of remittance flows along several dimensions: growth, poverty, inequality, schooling, health, labor supply, financial development, and real exchange rates.

Early childhood development outcomes play an important role throughout a person's life, affecting one's income-earning capacity and productivity, longevity, health, and cognitive ability. The deleterious effects of poor early childhood development outcomes can be long-lasting, affecting school attainment, employment, wages, criminality, and social integration of adults. The authors first take stock of early childhood development indicators in the region and explore access to early childhood development services for children of different backgrounds. They review recent evidence on the impact of early childhood development interventions in the region and investigate more deeply a selection of programs in Latin America and the Caribbean to distill lessons related to their design, implementation and institutionalization processes. The book concludes with a discussion of the challenges of scaling up and presents policy options to develop national early childhood development policies and programs that may be effective and sustained over time.