Evaluating the Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: Lessons from Latin America

By Laura B. Rawlings, Gloria M. Rubio. 2003

636 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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, many questions remain unanswered about the impact of conditional cash transfer programs, including those concerning their effectiveness under different country conditions and the sustainability of the welfare impacts.

Subfields: Nutrition and Dietetics, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

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Citations in the corpus

Social Protection for the Poor and Poorest in Developing Countries: Reflections on a Quiet Revolution (2009, background): “14 Information on impact has been collected in Rawlings & Rubio (2005) for several conditional cash transfer programmes, in Bertranou et al. (2002) for some non-contributory pension programmes, and for a broader range of programmes in Barrientos et al. (2008) and Grosh et al. (2008).”
PROGRESA and Its Impacts on the Welfare of Rural Households in Mexico (2005, neutral): “…analysis of the PROGRESA program comes at a crucial time as other Latin American countries (such as Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina ) are in the process of revising their social program along lines similar to those of the PROGRESA program in Mexico (Rawlings and Rubio 2002).”
Reducing Child Poverty with Cash Transfers: A Sure Thing? (2006, background): “A new generation of cash transfer programmes, specifically targeting children from poor households, has been introduced in Latin America during the past decade (Morley and Coady, 2003; Barrientos and DeJong, 2004; Case et al., 2005; Rawlings and Rubio, 2005).”
Labour markets and the (hyphenated) welfare regime in Latin America (2009, background): “They are predominantly focused on the poorest, through strict selection criteria, and combine the alleviation of poverty with investment in human capital directed at breaking the persistence of poverty across generations (Morley & Coady, 2003 ; Rawlings & Rubio, 2005 ).”
Spillovers from Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: Bolsa Família and Crime in Urban Brazil (2016, background): “There is substantial evidence from some of these settings on the positive effects of CCTs on enrollment rates, preventive health care, and nutrition (for reviews of the literature, see Rawlings and Rubio, 2005, and Fizbein and Schady, 2009).”
Social Assistance in Developing Countries (2013, background): “Roddis and Z. Tzannatos [1999] Family Allowances, Social Protection Discussion Paper 9814, Washington: The World Bank.”
Cash transfers, conditions, school enrollment, and child work: evidence from a randomized experiment in Ecuador (2006, background): “…programs is PROGRESA in Mexico (now re-named Oportunidades), although similar programs have also been implemented in a number of other Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, and Nicaragua (see Rawlings and Rubio 2005, and Das, Do, and Ozler 2005 for reviews).”
Introduction: Cash Transfers: Panacea for Poverty Reduction or Money Down the Drain? (2006, background): “A new generation of cash transfer programmes, specifically targeting children from poor households, has been introduced in Latin America during the past decade (Morley and Coady, 2003; Barrientos and DeJong, 2004; Case et al., 2005; Rawlings and Rubio, 2005 ).”