The Cost of Poverty Alleviation Transfer Programs: A Comparative Analysis of Three Programs in Latin America

By N. Caldés, D. Coady, J. Maluccio. 2004

226 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A common criticism of antipoverty programs is that the high share of administrative (nontransfer) costs substantially reduces their effectiveness. Yet there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical evidence on program costs. This study proposes and implements a replicable methodology for a comparative cost analysis of three similar poverty alleviation programs in Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua, and assesses their cost efficiency. The findings underscore that any credible assessment of cost-efficiency requires a detailed analysis of program cost structures that goes well beyond simply providing aggregate cost information.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d743e2241949d3a372e64e81729e156e2730a17

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Patrick Mcewan
2. Rachid Boumnijel
3. A. Mcclelland
4. Niall Tierney
5. Margaret E. Grosh
6. C. Ninno
7. E. Tesliuc
8. María Carmen Lemos

In Safety Research

1. Patrick Mcewan
2. Margaret E. Grosh
3. C. Ninno
4. Jef L. Leroy
5. E. Tesliuc
6. Ellen Verhofstadt
7. Jenny C. Aker
8. Sebastian Galiani

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Margaret E. Grosh
2. C. Ninno
3. E. Tesliuc
4. Jenny C. Aker
5. Sebastian Galiani
6. Hallie C. Eakin
7. M. Ruel
8. A. Ouerghi

Citations in the corpus

• Must Conditional Cash Transfer Programs be Conditioned to be Effective? The Impact of Conditioning Transfers on School Enrollment in Mexico (2011, unknown): “Caldes et al. (2006) show that monitoring conditionality represented approximately 18% of PROGRESA's administrative costs and 2% of total program costs.”
• The Heterogeneous Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers (2013, background): “port very similar but not identical amounts for the demand-side transfers (Caldés et al., 2006; Glewwe and Olinto, 2004; IFPRI, 2000; BID, 2004).”
• Linking development to climate adaptation: Leveraging generic and specific capacities to reduce vulnerability to drought in NE Brazil (2016, background): “Poverty alleviation programs are thus often designed to enhance and protect the asset base of the poor (through, for example, wealth transfer programs, nutrition programs and other safety nets) as well as to improve their capacity to mobilize assets by conditioning wealth transfers on household inve”
• Conditional Cash Transfers: Reducing Present and Future Poverty (2009, unknown): “К сожалению, имеется мало информации о расходах на мониторинг соблюдения условий, отчасти потому, что некоторые расходы возлагаются на работников сектора здравоохранения или образования, или включаются в категорию прочих административных расходов, и поэтому их нелегко учесть. единственный пример…”
• Payment Mechanisms and Antipoverty Programs: Evidence from a Mobile Money Cash Transfer Experiment in Niger (2016, background): “First, while there has been substantial literature on the costs of transfer programs (Caldes, Coady, and Maluccio 2004; Handa and Davis 2006), there is scant literature on the relative benefits and costs of electronic versus manual transfers.”