Global Development: Views from the Center

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It is so easy for people to think that good ideas - for good social programs or improved governance - only flow North-South. This example shows that it can flow in both directions and that the US has much to learn from social policy in developing countries.

I would note that the example frequently cited, PROGRESA, is often described as "World Bank-supported" when, in fact, its origins and funding are almost entirely domestic. Such characterizations just further the impression that good ideas only come from developed countries.

A final comment: the NYC case is apparently going to be funded by private contributions. Why does the US increasingly turn social policy over to private philanthropists? It is an absurdity that the US cannot make and fund social policy through our normal civic and democratic processes.

Funny -- I read the report from the anti-poverty commission, and couldn't find anywhere where it recommended paying poor people to send their kids to schools. Then I read the Mayor's remarks and he notes explicitly that the idea to try "conditional cash transfers" was _not_ directly recommended by the commission. So who did come up with the idea?

Oops. Andrew Leonard is 100% right. The idea appears in the Mayor's remarks, at some length, but not in the Commission report itself. They do, however, make a big push for evaluation, as noted above. Apologies for the error, and thanks to Andrew for correcting the record.

Hey, no worries. This is a great site/blog. I'm delighted to have found it today.

Conditioning welfare payments is politically attractive, especially on motherhood and apple pie interventions such as school attendance and vaccination, but monitoring and enforcing these conditions is also expensive so it is important to assess the costs and marginal benefits ex ante. Are NYC vaccination rates particularly low among the poor? Or are you paying people to do what they would do anyhow and increasing an entitlement unnecessarily?

Great post. Levy's Progress Against Poverty Book is available free online. Also there are more links about Progressa and CCT programs here.

Today's Financial Times (9/29, Wheatley and Lapper) credits Brazil's conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Familia with Lula's probably re-election this Sunday with this sub-title: "hand-outs have helped put the president on course for re-election..." These programs are indeed politically powerful, but I am troubled to see them described as hand-outs. Rigorous impact evaluations in 4 Latin American countries provide unambiguous evidence that CCT reduce poverty, increase schooling and improve nutritional status. With respect to Brazil, according to older papers on the program, the program performs less effectively with respect to nutrition (Morris et al 2003) but has recorded gains in schooling for poor children (Bourguignon et al 2003) and these human K gains are essentially irreversible -- another year of schooling completed is associated with higher returns in the labor market. And the Brazil program is now targeted to the poor using a more transparent mechanism. Newer evaluations being undertaken by IFPRI should tell us more, but providing conditioned transfers that improve the human capital of the poor should not be described as "hand-outs".

Great idea this - CCT - Can this be tried on a pilot basis, in some of the developing countries in Africa?

Richard, great question. In our analyses so far of CCT programs in Latin America, we've found that it's often desirable, if not necessary, to have a certain level of supply of services (both quality and quantity) available to respond to the increase in demand created by the cash transfers. This may be a dilemma in particulary poor or remote areas where there are serious supply constraints. On the other hand, it may create the desired incentives for a positive supply response. There is little concrete evidence so far to tell us which way it would go--yet another reason to pilot and rigorously evaluate!