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This paper estimates a collective model of the household and investigates how parents reach decisions to allocate household resources. Using data from PROGRESA, we test the restrictions of collective rationality on a large variety of specifications and show that, contrary to previous results, this modeling approach cannot rationalize the household decision process. We provide some evidence that the observed inefficiency is driven by the group receiving the cash transfers. These results are consistent with the idea that a possible indirect effect of CCT programs may be to enhance disagreements between the spouses which trigger an inefficient allocation of their resources. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This paper exploits the experimental set-up of the cash transfer program PROGRESA in rural Mexico to estimate a collective model of the household in order to investigate how parents allocate household resources. We show that household decisions are compatible with the collective model at the beginning of the program, but reject it later on. This shows that second order effects of cash transfer programs are important and suggests we need richer structural models to thoroughly analyse these policy interventions. We end this paper by proposing such a simple and tractable model of household behaviour, where decision makers may have misaligned preferences as a result of the treatment about the importance of a public good. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have become increasingly popular in low-income countries, particularly in Latin America. CCTs involve cash payments to poor families when they participate in educational, health-related, nutritional, or other services that could help lift them out of poverty. The apparent success of CCTs has led some development specialists to refer to CCTs as "a magic bullet." Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America evaluates the effectiveness and reliability of CCTs in reducing poverty. The contributors synthesize evidence and analysis from four case studies of Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Using state-of-the-art quantitative and qualitative methods, the studies examine various aspects of CCTs, including the trends in development and political economy that fostered interest in them; their impacts on education, health, nutrition, and food consumption; and how CCT programs affect -- and how their outcomes are affected by -- social relations shaped by gender, culture, and community. Throughout, the authors identify the strengths and weaknesses of CCTs and offer guidelines to those who design them. Successful programs depend on a clear definition of program goals, adapting program design to a particular country's circumstances, effective communication with CCT beneficiaries, high-quality services, and an appreciation of social relations within a given community. This new study is a valuable resource for anyone trying to understand, implement, improve, and build on the success of established conditional cash transfer programs. ; PR ; IFPRI1 ; PHND

Marginal in status a decade ago, cash transfer programs have become the preferred channel for delivering emergency aid or tackling poverty in low- and middle-income countries. While these programs have had positive effects, they are typical of top-down development interventions in that they impose on local contexts standardized norms and procedures regarding conditionality, targeting, and delivery. This book sheds light on the crucial importance of these contexts and the many unpredicted consequences of cash transfer programs worldwide - detailing how the latter are used by actors to pursue their own strategies, and how external norms are reinterpreted, circumvented, and contested by local populations.

Marginal in status a decade ago, cash transfer programs have become the preferred channel for delivering emergency aid or tackling poverty in low- and middle-income countries. While these programs have had positive effects, they are typical of top-down development interventions in that they impose on local contexts standardized norms and procedures regarding conditionality, targeting, and delivery. This book sheds light on the crucial importance of these contexts and the many unpredicted consequences of cash transfer programs worldwide - detailing how the latter are used by actors to pursue their own strategies, and how external norms are reinterpreted, circumvented, and contested by local populations.

The point of departure for this thesis was that a social policy model based on social investment principles became dominant in Latin America at the end of the 20th century. Conditioning a cash transfer on requirements of human capital accumulation became the prevailing idea on the anti-poverty and development agenda in Latin America and subsequently in other development contexts. The policy model was built to tackle persistent and extreme poverty by attempting to reduce poverty in the short-term and by breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty in the long-term. Nearly all countries in Latin America, and several others in the Global South, have implemented a CCT regardless of government ideologies and political perspectives, which raises interesting questions on the substantive content of the idea and its ability to appeal to such a diverse group of politicians and policymakers. In this thesis the idea of CCTs is studied from a broad theoretical perspective. I approach CCTs through the framework established most particularly by Jal Mehta (2011) who views ideas as problem definitions and as policy solutions. Through this framework I examine the underlying theoretical principles and assumptions that have guided the policy formation of conditional cash transfers, while assessing some of the factors that make the policy model so appealing to governments from different ideological backgrounds. The study is mainly carried out as a theoretical policy analysis, but in addition to the theoretical part of the study, I got an opportunity to study a particular conditional cash transfer in practice through a case study research strategy. The conditional cash transfer program of the Autonomous city of Buenos Aires, Ciudadania Porteña, is studied as empirical proof of the conditional cash transfer phenomenon. This study suggests that the policy idea of conditional cash transfers merges different social policy traditions and different, sometimes contradictory, theoretical principles. CCTs can be seen as representing rights based social protection, residual and cost-effective targeted social protection and economically productive social protection based on social investments. I argue that as hybrid social protection programs conditional cash transfers have the potential to gain legitimacy and appeal to a wide range of policymakers based on the underlying ideas that can be framed from different angles allowing them to be perceived as a proper solution to various problems, constructed from various perspectives.