Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are programs that transfer cash, generally to poor households, on the condition that those households make pre specified investments in the human capital of their children. This overview of the main report summarizes that there is good evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries. Offsetting adjustments that could have blunted the impact of transfers, such as reductions in the labor market participation of beneficiaries, have been relatively modest. The report also considers the rationale for conditioning the transfers on the use of specific health and education services by program beneficiaries. Thus CCTs have increased the likelihood that households will take their children for preventive health checkups, but that has not always led to better child nutritional status; school enrollment rates have increased substantially among program beneficiaries, but there is little evidence of improvements in learning outcomes. These findings suggest that to maximize their potential effects on the accumulation of human capital, CCTs should be combined with other programs to improve the quality of the supply of health and education services, and should provide other supporting services.

"If we are serious about tackling poverty, we must get serious about trying new things. Conditional cash transfer programs have proven effective in countries across the globe and New York is proud to be the first American city to experiment with the innovative idea. This book provides an up-to-date assessment of CCT programs based on impact evaluations studies from across the world. We look forward to adding our evaluation results to an important body of research, and continuing our work with partners worldwide to reach our shared goal of breaking cycles of intergenerational poverty." --Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor, New York City

"This book provides a careful and thorough assessment of the knowledge accumulated so far on conditional cash transfer programs; it will inform and orient academic economists and policy makers when thinking about starting, scaling-up and evaluating programs of this nature. Further, the book also raises issues that, in my view, are very relevant and have so far been under-emphasized, namely the need to place these programs within the broader context of countries' social policies. Fiszbein and Schady have produced a very valuable and timely work for all interested in poverty." --Santiago Levy, Vice-President, Interamerican Development Bank