Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon closely related to the low accumulation of human capital and scant economic opportunities for the poor. Government efforts to help households overcome poverty require actions on multiple fronts. The governments of Latin-America and the Caribbean are making important efforts to scale up innovative programs to increase the capabilities and economic opportunities of the poor. Increasingly, the implementation of these programs has been accompanied by significant efforts and resources to evaluate their impact and effectiveness. These evaluations have produced many useful lessons. This study reviews a set of rigorous impact evaluations, placing emphasis on extracting lessons to assess the development effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these interventions. The results presented in this review show a mostly positive picture of the impact of the programs evaluated. Results of the evaluations have also proven to be useful for identifying program weaknesses, such as problems with targeting mechanisms or groups that are not reaping the full benefits of the program, and inducing the adjustments necessary to increase program effectiveness. The evaluation results and the experience in implementing these programs also raise various issues for the reform of social and fiscal policies in order to make public social expenditure more effective, pro-poor, and fiscally sustainable. Scaling up well-targeted programs is key to improving the distributive impact of spending.

This study highlights the interaction between social protection programs and labor markets in the Latin America region. It presents new evidence on the limited coverage of existing programs and emphasizes the challenges caused by high informality for achieving universal social protection for old age income, for health, for unemployment risks and for anti poverty safety nets. It identifies interaction effects between SP programs and the behavioral responses of workers, firms and social protection providers, which can further undermine efforts to expand coverage, summarizing evidence from recent work across the region. It argues for a re-design of financing to eliminate cross subsidies between members of contributory programs and subsidies that effectively tax income from formal employment. Instead, it advocates well-targeted, tax-funded tapered subsidies to provide incentives to the savings efforts of low income workers, coupled with an effective safety net for the extreme poor who have no capacity to contribute to financing their own social protection arrangements. It also argues for the consolidation of programs and harmonization of benefits packages across different insurers. The book develops an overall conceptual framework and presents in-depth analysis of the main SP sectors of pensions, health, unemployment insurance and safety net transfers.

This study highlights the interaction between social protection (SP) programs and labor markets in the Latin America region. It presents new evidence on the limited coverage of existing programs and emphasizes the challenges caused by high informality for achieving universal social protection for old age income, health, unemployment risks and anti-poverty safety nets. It identifies interaction effects between SP programs and the behavioral responses of workers, firms and social protection providers, which can further undermine efforts to expand coverage, summarizing evidence from recent work across the region. The book argues for a re-design of financing to eliminate cross subsidies between members of contributory programs and subsidies that effectively tax income from formal employment. It advocates well-targeted, tax-funded, tapered subsidies to provide incentives to the savings efforts of low-income workers, coupled with an effective safety net for the extreme poor who have no capacity to contribute to financing their own social protection arrangements. It also argues for the consolidation of programs and harmonization of benefits packages across different insurers. The book develops an overall conceptual framework and presents in-depth analysis of the main SP sectors of pensions, health, unemployment insurance and labor market programs, and safety net transfers.

This new Handbook is a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of Latin American Security by a mix of established and emerging scholars. The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Security identifies the key contemporary topics of research and debate, taking into account that the study of Latin America’s comparative and international politics has undergone dramatic changes since the end of the Cold War, the return of democracy and the re-legitimization and re-armament of the military against the background of low-level uses of force short of war. Latin America’s security issues have become an important topic in international relations and Latin American studies. This Handbook sets a rigorous agenda for future research and is organised into five key parts: • The Evolution of Security in Latin America • Theoretical Approaches to Security in Latin America • Different 'Securities' • Contemporary Regional Security Challenges • Latin America and Contemporary International Security Challenges With a focus on contemporary challenges and the failures of regional institutions to eliminate the threat of the use of force among Latin Americans, this Handbook will be of great interest to students of Latin American politics, security studies, war and conflict studies and International Relations in general.

This semiannual journal from the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) provides a forum for influential economists and policymakers from the region to share high-quality research directly applied to policy issues within and among those countries. Tentative contents include •What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You—or at Least Mislead You: Family Behaviors, Unobserved Heterogeneities, and the Determinants of and Impacts of Human Resources over the Life Cycle Jere R. Behrman (University of Pennsylvania) • Estimates of the Benefit Incidence of Workfare Lucas Ronconi (University of California–Berkeley)