This book explores Conditional Cash Transfers programs within the context of education policy over the past several decades. Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) provide cash to poor families upon the fulfillment of conditions related to the education and health of their children. Even though CCTs aim to improve educational attainment, it is not clear whether Departments or Ministries of Education have internalized CCTs into their own sets of policies and whether that has had an impact on the quality of education being offered to low income students. Equally intriguing is the question of how conditional cash transfer programs have been politically sustained in so many countries, some of them having existed for over ten years. In order to explore that, this book will build upon a comparative study of three programs across the Americas: Opportunity NYC, Subsidios Condicionados a la Asistencia Escolar (Bogota, Colombia), and Bolsa Famila (Brazil). The book presents a detailed and non-official account on the NYC and Bogota programs and will analyze CCTs from both a political and education policy perspective.

"Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs aim to alleviate poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health, and nutrition. The success of CCT programs at reducing poverty depends on whether, and the extent to which, cash transfers affect adult work incentives. The authors examine whether the PROGRESA program of Mexico affects adult participation in the labor market and overall adult leisure time, and they link these effects to the impact of the program on poverty. Using the experimental design of PROGRESA's evaluation sample, the authors find that the program does not have any significant effect on adult labor force participation and leisure time. Their findings on adult work incentives are reinforced further by the result that PROGRESA leads to a substantial reduction in poverty. The poverty reduction effects are stronger for the poverty gap and severity of poverty measures."--World Bank web site.

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. That is, the government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office, receiving vaccinations, or the like. They have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality and helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another. Do these and other claims make sense? Are they supported by the available empirical evidence? This volume seeks to answer these and other related questions. Specifically, it lays out a conceptual framework for thinking about the economic rationale for CCTs; it reviews the very rich evidence that has accumulated on CCTs; it discusses how the conceptual framework and the evidence on impacts should inform the design of CCT programs in practice; and it discusses how CCTs fit in the context of broader social policies. The authors show that there is considerable evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people and argue that conditional cash transfers have been an effective way of redistributing income to the poor. They also recognize that even the best-designed and managed CCT cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. They therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs, and social pensions.

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs aim to alleviate poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health, and nutrition. The success of CCT programs at reducing poverty depends on whether, and the extent to which, cash transfers affect adult work incentives. The authors examine whether the PROGRESA program of Mexico affects adult participation in the labor market and overall adult leisure time, and they link these effects to the impact of the program on poverty. Using the experimental design of PROGRESA's evaluation sample, the authors find that the program does not have any significant effect on adult labor force participation and leisure time. Their findings on adult work incentives are reinforced further by the result that PROGRESA leads to a substantial reduction in poverty. The poverty reduction effects are stronger for the poverty gap and severity of poverty measures.

Over the past 20 years, more than 100 countries have implemented social safety nets, targeted at the poorest and most vulnerable. Impact evaluations have shown the effectiveness of these programmes, and policymakers have explored different methods of delivery, including cash transfers. Cash Transfers for Poverty Reduction offers the first systematic discussion of the design and implementation of poverty reduction schemes, and cash transfer programmes in particular. The authors also draw on their own practical experienceand present global case studies to show the effects that these decisions have on operations and outcomes. Featuring end-of-chapter questions and answers to help test your knowledge, this book offers an operational guide for key stakeholders, officials and students in understanding the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of cash transfer programmes.

Conditional cash transfer programs, whereby transfers to households are conditional on school attendance or health checkups, have become a widespread policy tool. They are viewed as a means of immediate poverty alleviation through the cash payments, and as a foundation of long-term poverty reduction through the emphasis on human capital formation. Because targeted transfers are usually conditioned on the consumption of normal goods, richer eligible households are more likely to consume more educational and health care opportunities than poorer ones. Thus, the eligible poorest households may benefit least from conditional cash transfers even to the extent that they may not participate at all. If conditionality is conceptualized as a cost at the margin, it may be leading poor households to opt out. This paper proposes a framework to model household decision making on participation (or not) in cash transfer programs depending on whether a conditionality exists. The paper outlines the optimal size of the cash transfer such that a fixed government budget maximizes the poverty reduction. The paper also shows that unconditional cash transfers may be preferable over conditional cash transfers if a government has a sufficiently high degree of poverty aversion, that is, if, beyond the poverty headcount, the government cares about how poor the poor are or the distance of the poorest among the poor below the poverty line. This basic argument carries over from income poverty to education poverty. The framework can be useful in shaping the recent discussion on the merits of universal benefits over conditional transfers in reducing poverty.