From Social Assistance to Social Development : Targeted Education Subsidies in Developing Countries

Samuel Morley and David Coady demonstrate how a promising new alternative to standard donor-financed education programs―the conditioned transfer for education (CTE) program―can advance both poverty reduction and education goals at the same time. CTE programs meet the immediate needs of the poorest families by providing cash or food but only on the condition that they keep their children in school. These transfers reduce poverty in the short run, and the additional education of the children of poor families breaks the long-run cycle of poverty by increasing their earning potential.The book compiles a vast amount of unpublished and published material on existing CTE programs and their impact on poverty. Groundbreaking case studies and detailed evaluations of programs in Mexico, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Chile add up to an unusual and surprising success story for skeptics of development and foreign aid.

Samuel Morley is a visiting research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He has published monographs on poverty and distribution in Latin America, conditioned cash transfers and the effect of CAFTA in Central America. During his 25 years at the University of Wisconsin and Vanderbilt he taught the graduate macro course and published books on inflation and macroeconomics, and wrote a number of papers on the role of finance in macro models. Since he came to IFPRI he has developed CGE models with a regional focus for Peru, a trade focus for the analysis of CAFTA, and most recently a CGE model with working capital for Honduras.

David Coady is Deputy Division Chief of the Expenditure Policy Division at the Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) of the IMF. Prior to that, he was a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and a lecturer in economics in the University of London. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics in 1992.