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54-750: Opportunity NYC was an experimental conditional cash transfer program (CCT) by the Mayor of New York City , Michael Bloomberg . Announced in April 2007, it was the first CCT program to be launched in the United States. Its initial phases were funded by a number of private partners including The Rockefeller Foundation , Robin Hood Foundation , the Open Society Institute , Starr Foundation , AIG , and Mayor Bloomberg's own Bloomberg Family Foundation . The program

108-409: A 'social contract' with the beneficiaries – for example, sending children to school regularly or bringing them to health centers. For extremely poor families, cash provides emergency assistance, while the conditionalities promote longer-term investments in human capital." Those on the right applaud the system because it relies on individual initiative and acts as an investment in the future: Children in

162-415: A 2-3% greater likelihood of receiving a training certificate or associate degree. Conditional cash transfer Few development initiatives have been evaluated as rigorously as CCT programs. The implementation of conditional cash transfer programs has been accompanied by systematic efforts to measure their effectiveness and understand their broader impact on household behavior, a marked departure from

216-468: A comprehensive assessment provided by the World Bank, the structure of conditional cash transfer programs has not yet been adjusted to retain success in the event of a large financial crisis. Primarily, conditional cash transfer programs are not flexible enough to extend benefits to households that fall into the program's targeted population only during economic downturns. Thus, those not normally covered by

270-765: A conditional cash transfer program. Conditional cash transfer programs are not used widely in Europe. In the UK, in 2011 CentreForum proposed an additional child benefit dependent on parenting activities. In Turkey, CCT program has still been implemented by GDSA since 2003 with education and health components in which almost 6 billion Turkish Liras (app. 2 billion Euros) have been spent to about 3.5 million beneficiary households. In order to be paid regularly in CCT program, students (ages 5–20) have to attend to their school regularly and children (ages 0–6) have to be taken to health centres regularly. All

324-421: A degree and decrease early school leaving rates which also is one of the most important topics for 2020 European Union targets for a sustainable growth. In the scope of the project, extra incentives were added into CCT education programme aiming to support high school education attendance which would provide stronger reinforcement for the CCT families. Grants (€60 in 2014 and €70 in 2015 for each eligible student)

378-610: A four or more person family. There is also an extra bonus of 200 kwacha for children enrolled in primary school and 400 kwacha for children enrolled in secondary school. The location for the program is in the Mchinji District, the 14th poorest district out of 28 in Malawi. It was chosen for its average poverty level of all the districts in Malawi and its proximity to the capital, Lilongwe . The first comprehensive systematic review of evidence on health effects of cash transfers found that

432-636: A high school student, and $ 25 per parent-teacher conference the parents attended. The health component gave money for health related milestones, including $ 200 for each family member who received a non-emergency checkup from a doctor, and $ 200 upon completion of a pediatrician advised Early Intervention evaluation for a child under 30 months. The work component gives families $ 300 for someone working an average of 30 hours/week for 2 months, or between $ 300–$ 600 for completing an education or professional training course. The World Bank , considers that "Conditional cash transfers provide money directly to poor families via

486-446: A household in which no able-bodied members 19–64 can work due to chronic sickness or disability or a household with one-able bodied member that has to care for more than three dependents. About 22% of Malawi as of 2007 was ultra-poor, living on less than 20 cents a day, and of that group 10% are labor constrained. The program would give anywhere from 600 kwacha ($ 4 US) monthly for a one-person household to 1800 kwacha ($ 13 US) monthly for

540-530: A leading factor in the CCT programs' downfalls. The extensive study by the UN Development Programme on Nicaragua's Social Protection Network (RPS) reveals that the level of distrust of the program was so high that a domestic publicity campaign could have possibly saved the RPS from extinction. This high level of domestic distrust was due, in part, to efforts to politicize the program. One report addressed in

594-586: A major tool of their social policy since they have been proven to be very effective in helping poor families. By 2011 CCTs had spread to 18 countries in the region and covered as many as 129 million beneficiaries. Although the conditions and amounts of money may vary from country to country, ranging from $ 5 to $ 33 per child, in general these programs provide money to poor families under the condition that those transfers are used as an investment on their children's human capital, such as regular school attendance and basic preventive health care. The purpose of these programs

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648-524: A series of obstacles to their success that have caused some programs to be stunted or terminated completely. According to a comprehensive study done by senior research analysts Laura Rawlings and Gloria Rubio of the World Bank , the beginning stages of program implementation present the challenge of creating a reliable implementation schedule. On many occasions, changes in political leadership, natural disasters, or changes in program administration have delayed

702-592: A significant amount of research has been conducted regarding the implementation of these programs in Africa. In addition, programs are looking to the Latin America for examples on how to implement these programs. While there are a few unconditional cash transfer programs in Africa being tested, two conditional cash transfer programs in Africa are currently being implemented. For CCTs to be successful, they require sufficient infrastructure. Poor education and health systems limit

756-404: A significant increase in the quality of education and in learning nor significant increased salaries, once the recipients entered the labor force. Most CCT programs are very well-targeted and effective in reaching the poor and the excluded groups, notably the extreme poor living outside the reach of social protection programs tied with formal sector employment. On average, 80% of the benefits go to

810-496: A steady income, they have helped protect poor households from the worst effects of unemployment, catastrophic illness, and other sudden income shocks. And making cash transfers to women, as virtually all CCTs do, may have increased their bargaining power. In the US, a paper by the Institute for Research on Poverty concluded in 2011: Over time, we find that expenditures have shifted toward

864-560: A study on the feasibility of a Haitian CCT made by the International Food Policy Research Institute . In the focus group they interviewed, almost all subjects expressed a "profound lack of faith" in the Haitian government. Instead, they preferred that the conditional cash transfer programs be implemented by community committees or NGOs . However, this distrust in governments' ability to fairly implement CCTs fairly

918-660: Is a 10-year-old aid initiative that has been credited with alleviating Mexico's direst poverty and makes demands on participants while offering small but meaningful cash rewards. The cash payments go to the family, almost always the mother or other female head of the household. Parents can receive from $ 40 to $ 100 a month if they keep up with responsibilities such as taking their children to the doctor or keeping them in school. The program has three components: an education, health and work component. The education component gave money for certain milestones, including $ 50/month for 95% high school attendance, $ 600 for each Regent exam passed by

972-605: Is an Argentine government agency which directs and co-ordinates most of the scientific and technical research done in universities and institutes. The National Scientific and Technical Research Council was established on 5 February 1958 by a decree of the national government. Its first director was Nobel Laureate Bernardo A. Houssay . Governed by a board independent from the federal government, it funds scientific research in three basic ways. Firstly, it gives grants for collective work to research teams of well-recognized scientists of every discipline, including social sciences and

1026-604: Is being evaluated by MDRC , a nonprofit research firm, using a random assignment research design. Opportunity NYC is administered by Seedco , a nonprofit community development organization. The program ended on 31 August 2010. The program hoped to build on the successes of similar programs that had garnered international recognition in the developing world, including the Bolsa Familia in Brazil and Oportunidades in Mexico . Oportunidades

1080-462: Is monitored, ranging from monitoring attendance based on teacher's report, all the way to a sophisticated system involving monitoring through biometric fingerprint machines. In addition, within each classroom, which parent (the mother or father) is randomized to see if the family benefits more from having the money targeted to one or the other. This study will bring research that assesses the importance of conditionality, monitoring, and targeting within

1134-482: Is not strictly limited to developing countries. In an article in The New York Times addressing the termination of the pilot CCT, Opportunity NYC , the committee leader of one of its lending institutions stated that people were distrustful and confused by the program's intricacies. New York City 's deputy mayor for health and human services added that many busy and stressed households were not being able to handle

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1188-492: Is proposed by proponents of a rights-based approach to development . From a human rights perspective, cash transfers are a means to ensure the human rights to social protection and an adequate standard of living for all members of society, including first and foremost the fundamental right to food. States have the duty to ensure those rights with a maximum of available resources. While reducing poverty in general, conditional cash transfers have shown to often exclude those who need it

1242-475: Is provided for parents (preferably mothers) of high school (9th, 10th and 11th grades and 12th for 2015) CCT beneficiaries suffering from lack of financial resources to cover educational expenditures especially in the beginning of each year. Specific programs: National Scientific and Technical Research Council The National Scientific and Technical Research Council ( Spanish : Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas , CONICET )

1296-520: Is to address the inter-generational transmission of poverty and to foster social inclusion by targeting the poor, focusing on children, delivering transfers to women, and changing social accountability relationships between beneficiaries, service providers and governments. Most of these transfer schemes are now benefiting around 110 million people in the region, and are considered relatively cheap, costing around 0.5% of their GDP. Conditional cash transfer programs can be very effective in reducing poverty in

1350-477: The World Bank . The program targets poor regions of Morocco with high dropout rates and should cover 160,000 households by 2010. The pilot program is a comparative test that has four treatment groups. One group is receiving unconditional cash transfers, regardless of child school attendance. The next three are given conditional cash transfers to families of children grades 3-6 based on the child's attendance at school. The three treatment groups vary in how attendance

1404-442: The 40% poorest families. The programs have also promoted equality of gender since they provide larger funds to girls since they often drop out earlier, so it has increased their enrollment and attendance to secondary levels of education. In the long run, these investments may also yield to significant changes in women's empowerment and insertion in economic networks. While most conditional cash transfer programs are in Latin America,

1458-404: The UN Development Programme's study stated that RPS employees were approached by members of the government, who demanded that half their salaries be donated to the party in power. Although the RPS was successful in avoiding the threats, it was later revealed that the RPS was the only Nicaraguan institution of its kind not making government contributions. This same level of distrust is reflected in

1512-478: The Universal Allocation per Child programme had increased school attendance for children between the ages of 15 and 17 by 3.9 percent. CCTs have affected not only the overall level of consumption, but also the composition of consumption. There is evidence that households that receive CCTs spend more on food and, in the food basket, on higher-quality sources of nutrients than do households that do not receive

1566-633: The benefits of CCT programs. Impacts should be seen in regard to the effectiveness of health and education institutions of the country. In South Africa unconditional cash transfer and social assistance spending amounts to approximately US$ 20-billion per annum or 15.2% of its total Governmental expenditure (while the country has a GDP of only US$ 368-billion). The number of individual programme beneficiaries totalled 17.5-million in 2018 (76.1% of its total labour force), compared to Bolsa Família in Brazil which has 12-million families as beneficiary The impact on

1620-665: The best Latin American government research institution by the Scimago Institutions Ranking and the 2nd among all research institutions in the region after the Universidade de São Paulo . At the global level, CONICET holds the 141st position among the most prestigious 8084 research institutions worldwide (including universities, governmental and private research institutions, research councils, etc.). This Argentine university, college, or tertiary institution related article

1674-494: The case of self-targeting, used by Mexico's Progresa-Oportunidades, working women may be excluded from the program because they are unable to miss work to register or accomplish all conditions. In the case of community-based targeting, the World Bank study notes that the extremely poor who may live in generally middle-class communities will be excluded. Targeted populations' distrust of the program due to lack of adequate information has been noted by at least three case studies to be

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1728-444: The conditions are being monitored by GDSA from the databases of Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education by the means of an interactive web-based MIS. The conditional education grants are provided to children of the target group on school enrollment condition, from the first grade through the end of the twelfth grade. Once qualified as beneficiaries, children should maintain at least 80 per cent attendance rate to continue to receive

1782-614: The country's labour force participation has been found to be "ambiguous and dependent on a number of factors", according to the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit, while "education and health-care conditions attached to many transfers can also increase human capital formation and therefore create a long-term positive impact on labour market participation". Since 2007 a pilot conditional cash transfer program has been researching its effectiveness in Morocco, organized by

1836-598: The disabled and the elderly, and away from those with the lowest incomes and toward those with higher incomes, with the consequence that post-transfer rates of deep poverty for some groups have increased. We conclude that the U.S. benefit system is paternalistic and tilted toward the support of the employed and toward groups with special needs and perceived deservingness. A 2022 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that CCT to newborns increased their educational outcomes and young adult earnings. The economic impact

1890-631: The drop-out rates. The project named "Strengthening the Impact of the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme in Turkey for Increasing High School Attendance" (Liseye Devam Senden, Destek Bizden) has been started up in December 2014 by GDSA through EU co-finance. The project has been integrated to Turkey's CCT implementation and designed for high school CCT beneficiaries in order to ensure them to get

1944-419: The forms. It was shown that conditionality had the strongest impact on children's attendance to secondary school, as enrollment rates in secondary school were higher for those that received the forms. Another report on an experiment in Malawi is researching the importance of conditionality among families with school-age girls. The program was conducted, with data collected between October 2007 and June 2010. It

1998-408: The grant. Individual payment amounts differ according to components. Girls are paid higher amounts than boys in education component to encourage poor families to send their daughters to school. Besides, due to increasing drop-out rates in higher grades, secondary school (9th–12th grades) students are paid higher amounts than primary school ones in order to ensure the effect of the program on decreasing

2052-405: The humanities. Secondly, it has a payroll of about 6,500 researchers and 2,500 technicians working as employees in different categories, from investigador asistente (assistant researcher) to investigador principal (main researcher). Thirdly, it grants scholarships for doctoral and post-doctoral studies to 8,500 young researchers from Argentina and other countries. In 2022, CONICET was ranked as

2106-563: The implementation schedule and lead to decreased efficiency or program termination. An example of the negative outcomes of one such delay is provided by the UN Development Programme 's in-depth study of the short-lived Nicaragua's Social Protection Network . According to the study, the movement of the program administration to the country's Ministry of the Family caused a delay in efficiency and resources that, among other factors, led to

2160-587: The limited attention that was paid to rigorous impact evaluations in the past. Evaluation results are available for PROGRESA in Mexico, PETI in Brazil and the Atencion a Crisis in Nicaragua. These evaluations reveal that conditional cash transfers can provide effective incentives for investing in the poor's human capital. A 2015 analysis by staff at Argentina's National Scientific and Technical Research Council estimated that

2214-690: The many conditions they had to complete since they were not efficiently educated about the program. There have been discussions about whether imposing conditions is necessary or important for a cash transfer program. Research, such as the pilot conditional cash transfer program in Indonesia called Generasi , examined the importance of conditionality. One report looks at data from Mexico's Oportunidades/Progresa program, which looks at families who accidentally did not receive forms that monitor school attendance and therefore received unconditional cash transfers. It then compares them with those households that did receive

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2268-508: The most, violating the human rights principle of non-discrimination and equality. The following program in Malawi is an example of an unconditional cash transfer: The Mchinji Pilot Social Cash Transfer Scheme is part of the larger Malawi Social Protection Policy and Framework, and began in April 2006. It is mainly financed by UNICEF and the National AIDS Commission. The objectives of the scheme are to reduce poverty of people in

2322-483: The pilot area who are ultra poor and labor constrained, increase school enrolment and attendance, and to generate information regarding the feasibility of a cash transfer program as part of a Social Protection Programme for Malawi. The goal for this program is to reduce the ultra poverty rate from the 22% rate in 2007 to 10% by 2015. This program targets those households that are ultra poor (See poverty for definition) and those who are labor constrained, defined as either

2376-428: The program are healthier, they stay in school longer and they grow up with a better chance to become productive citizens. Those on the left say the program helps stabilize troubled families and gives poor children more consistent access to society's benefits. The program was constantly evaluated by MDRC, and data from the first two years of the program has been released, with the hope that research covering all 3 years of

2430-464: The program will be released in March 2011. The data shows that the program, in terms of overall poverty, created the greatest improvement in reducing the share of families living in severe poverty from 30% to 17%, and increased the likelihood that parents had bank accounts. In terms of education, positive results were most seen in high school and less in elementary and middle school students. The program group

2484-465: The program's benefits may be harder hit than those who are but will not be able to be assisted. Another common obstacle to success in most CCTs is exclusion of needy homes in the targeting process. In an assessment by the World Bank, much exclusion was due to remote communities' inability to access schools or clinics. Many such communities fall into developing countries' most poverty-stricken populations but cannot follow through with conditionalities since

2538-436: The program's termination. Delays can also be caused by difficulties in developing the program management information system (MIS). One such delay in Mexico's Oportunidades program caused 27% of its targeted population not to receive any transfers after two years of implementation. In addition to unscheduled delays, other external factors that can hinder a CCT's success pertain to unexpected financial crisis. According to

2592-455: The relative effectiveness of conditional and unconditional cash transfers remains very uncertain. The review found only three studies that compared conditional cash transfers with unconditional ones directly, and it recommended additional randomized controlled trials of conditional compared with unconditional cash transfers. Conditional cash transfers have been used in many countries: Many countries in Latin America are now using CCT programs as

2646-473: The short term since they have helped to increase household income and consumption in poor families. They have also worked effectively in increasing school enrollment and attendance, especially in middle school. A substantial improvement in health and nutrition of the children that benefit from these programs has been acknowledged. However, studies by the UNDP have shown that conditional cash transfers neither represented

2700-485: The transfer but have comparable overall income or consumption levels. In Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkey, where school enrollment rates among girls were lower than among boys, CCTs have helped reduce this gender gap. CCTs have resulted in sizeable reductions in poverty among recipients—especially when the transfer has been sufficient, well targeted, and structured in a way that does not discourage recipients from taking other actions to escape poverty. Because CCTs provide

2754-556: The transportation costs to attend schools or hospital visits outweigh the benefits. Furthermore, an evaluation of Mexico's Progresa- Oportunidades program addresses the issue that those in poverty with debilitating illnesses can be excluded from CCTs due to their physical inability to accomplish the conditionalities. Exclusion has been noted by both the World Bank study and the Progresa-Oportunidades evaluation evident in community-based targeting and self-targeting approaches. In

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2808-462: Was found that the treatment arm providing conditional cash transfer programs had higher enrollment rates, as well as higher scores in independently administered tests of cognitive ability, mathematics and English reading comprehension. However, the UCT treatment arm had a much lower incidence of pregnancy and marriage among school-age girls. A strong argument against the conditionality of social cash transfers

2862-404: Was large enough that "that the transfer pays for itself through subsequent increases in federal income tax revenue". Modest financial incentives delivered in routine clinical practice have been found to significantly improve adherence to, and completion of, vaccination programmes. Although the benefits of conditional cash transfer programs across the world have been widely noted, there remains

2916-435: Was shown to have an increased likelihood of passing at least two Regents exams by 6%, and increased the likelihood of having a 95% or better attendance by 15%. The effects of the program on improving heath was marginal, as the most significant statistic was an increase in the receipt of at least two preventative dental care visits by 10%. The program also had marginal effects in enhancing the parents' work and training, as it had

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