Conditional Cash Transfers

Conditional cash transfers provide money to poor families contingent on them making investments in human capital, such as keeping their children in school or taking them to health centers on a regular basis.They are an increasingly popular instrument of social assistance. For a selected list of CCT programs, see table B.5 in appendix B. 

CCTs have two explicit goals to reduce the current level of poverty and to promote investments in the human capital of the poor to reduce their level of future poverty. The balance between these goals varies somewhat among programs and affects some of their design features. 

CCT programs have mostly developed a combination of careful targeting mechanisms, usually involving poverty maps and proxy means tests, and sometimes community targeting, to select individual households. As is usual with targeting systems, implementation details are crucial to achieve the desired targeting outcomes (see chapter 4). 

The use of conditions and the impact of the enforcement of conditions in contrast to the impact of simple cash transfers alone is subject to debate (de Janvry and Sadoulet 2006 Samson 2006 Schubert and Slater 2006) (box 7.15). 

FOR PROIEdlONAND PROMOTION THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EFFECTIVE SAFETY NETS 

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The indicators used to monitor cash transfers are also used for conditional cash transfers. In addition, the following aspects are monitored. 

In conditional cash transfer programs, if education is not inclusive, children with disabilities may in practice be excluded by the requirement to enroll in and attend school. While inclusive education is the right long-run answer to this problem, in the interim, the conditions can be waived for such children. In Jamaica, for example, the PATH conditional cast transfer initiative waives the school attendance requirement if the child has a disability certificate and the program officer judges that the school is not sufficiently inclusive to allow the child to benefit from attending it. 

Conditional cash transfers transfers to poor households conditional on specific behavior... 

The plan is to convert the program into a conditional cash transfer program following a pilot program in 2007 that is still ongoing. 

The program s aim was to increase primary school enrollment, promote attendance, and reduce dropout rates among children from landless and very poor families. It provided rice and/or wheat transfers to poor households conditional on minimum school attendance by the children (85% per month) in primary school. The program was converted into a conditional cash transfer program (Primary Education Stipend Program) in 2002. 

Cash transfer programs. Programs that transfer cash to eligible people or households. Common variants include child allowances, social pensions, needs-based transfers, and conditional cash transfers. 

Adato, Michelle, Terence Roopnaraine, Natalia Smith, Elif Altinok, Nurfer ( elebioglu, and Serna Cemal. 2007. An Evaluation of the Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Turkey Second Qualitative and Anthropological Study. Washington, DC International Food Pohcy Research Institute. 

Ahmed, Akhter U. 2004a. Assessing the Performance of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs for Girls and Boys in Primary and Secondary Schools in Bangladesh. Project report prepared for the World Bank. Washington, DC International Food Policy Research Institute. 

How Effective Are Conditional Cash Transfers Evidence From Colombia. IFS Briefing Note 54. London Institute for Fiscal Studies. 

Ayala, Francisco V., and Cristina Endara. 2005. Cash Transfers Lessons Learnt from the Design and Implementation of a Conditional Cash Transfer Programme. Jamaican Case Programme for Advancement through Health and Education. Policy case study draft prepared for the Inter-Regional Inequity Facility. Quito. 

Barham, Tania. 2005a. The Impact of the Mexican Conditional Cash Transfer on Immunization Rates. Final report. Berkeley, CA University of California-Berkeley. 

Bourguignon, Francois, Francisco Ferreira, and Phillippe Leite. 2003. Conditional Cash Transfers, Schooling, and Child Labor Micro-Simulation Brazils Bolsa Escola Program. World Bank Economic Review 17 (2) 229—54. 

Combariza, Rita. 2006. The Impact of the Conditionalities of Familias en Accion. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on Conditional Cash Transfers, Istanbul, June 26-30, 2006. 

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