Is the Conditionality Necessary in Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes? Evidence from Mexico

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are an increasingly popular tool for poverty alleviation. Drawing on lessons learned from programmes in a variety of countries ? notably Mexico?s PROGRESA programme ? they are now found throughout the developing world. CCTs give cash transfers to households that meet specific conditions or undertake certain actions, such as ensuring that school-age children go to school or that pre-school children regularly see a nurse or doctor. (...)Is the Conditionality Necessary in Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes? Evidence from Mexico

Livelihoods, growth, and links to market towns in 15 Ethiopian villages

""This paper uses longitudinal data from 15 villages in rural Ethiopia to explore the nature and consequences of these links. It addresses the following questions: (1) What are the links between rural households and local urban centers? (2) Does better access to local market towns affect household economic behavior? and (3) Does better access to local market towns make households better off? ...In our results, market towns and cities are an important source of demand for products produced in rural areas, and rural residents are a source of demand for goods sold in urban areas. Improving the presence of roads, their quality, and improved transport are important factors that willfurther bind these spaces together and improve rural welfare market towns." from Authors' AbstractRural-urban linkages ,Livelihoods ,

The impact of Progresa on food consumption

" This paper as exemplified by the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations, the reduction of poverty and hunger are now seen as central objectives of international development. Yet the modalities for attaining these goals are contested. Further, while it might be assumed that interventions that alleviate poverty will automatically reduce hunger, a number of studies of the relationship between income and the acquisition of food suggest that this assumption may be incorrect. There are sharply divergent views as to how much narrowly targeted interventions actually benefit the poor. These result from differing assessments of three issues: whether better targeting outcomes are likely to be achieved, whether such methods are cost-effective, and whether the living standards of the poor are improved by such targeted interventions. This paper contributes to this debate through an analysis of a Mexican antipoverty program called PROGRESA (the Programa de Educación, Salud y Alimentación). PROGRESA provides cash transfers linked to children's enrollment and regular school attendance and to clinic attendance. By 2000, it reached approximately 2.6 million families, about 40 percent of all rural families and about one-ninth of all families in Mexico. We use a longitudinal sample of approximately 24,000 households from 506 communities.... We find that the impact is greatest on dietary quality as measured by the acquisition of calories from vegetable and animal products a finding consistent with the view of respondents themselves that PROGRESA was enabling them to to eat better" from Authors' Abstract.Progresa ,

Social protection: Opportunities for Africa

"Social protection involves policies and programs that protect people against risk and vulnerability, mitigate the impacts of shocks, and support people who suffer from chronic incapacities to secure basic livelihoods. It can also build assets, reducing both short-term and intergenerational transmission of poverty. It includes social insurance (such as health, life, and asset insurance, which may involve contributions from employers and/or beneficiaries); social assistance (mainly cash, food, vouchers, or subsidies); and services (such as maternal and child health and nutrition programs). Interventions that provide training and credit for income-generating activities also have a social protection component. Interest in social protection is growing across Africa, fueled by persistent high rates of poverty and malnutrition; the undermining of livelihoods and family-based support systems by shocks such as the AIDS epidemic; volatile food prices and the calamities of weather and war; extensive evidence that denying children basic nutrition, health, and education has lifelong, irreversible, and intergenerational consequences; and growing evidence of the effectiveness of social protection in low-income countries throughout the world—particularly in contributing to poverty reduction and improved health, nutrition, and education. Approaches vary across regions and countries, with a notable introduction or scale-up of cash transfers for the very poor in southern and East Africa. While many programs have been undertaken on a pilot basis, successful implementation of large-scale social protection programs in Ethiopia and South Africa—each with more than 8 million beneficiaries—has demonstrated that social protection systems are no longer only within the reach of rich countries." from Author's textSocial protection, Poverty reduction, Hunger, Cash transfers,

The impact of Progresa on food consumption

" This paper as exemplified by the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations, the reduction of poverty and hunger are now seen as central objectives of international development. Yet the modalities for attaining these goals are contested. Further, while it might be assumed that interventions that alleviate poverty will automatically reduce hunger, a number of studies of the relationship between income and the acquisition of food suggest that this assumption may be incorrect. There are sharply divergent views as to how much narrowly targeted interventions actually benefit the poor. These result from differing assessments of three issues: whether better targeting outcomes are likely to be achieved, whether such methods are cost-effective, and whether the living standards of the poor are improved by such targeted interventions. This paper contributes to this debate through an analysis of a Mexican antipoverty program called PROGRESA (the Programa de Educación, Salud y Alimentación). PROGRESA provides cash transfers linked to children's enrollment and regular school attendance and to clinic attendance. By 2000, it reached approximately 2.6 million families, about 40 percent of all rural families and about one-ninth of all families in Mexico. We use a longitudinal sample of approximately 24,000 households from 506 communities.... We find that the impact is greatest on dietary quality as measured by the acquisition of calories from vegetable and animal products a finding consistent with the view of respondents themselves that PROGRESA was enabling them to to eat better" from Authors' Abstract.Progresa ,

Consumption soothing and vulnerability in the Zone Lacustre, Mali

"This paper explores risk sharing in the Zone Lacustre, Mali, as viewed through the lens of consumption smoothing. We find that idiosyncratic shocks appear to have little impact on consumption, and that households respond to these shocks in a variety of ways. In general, nonpoor households are more likely to enter into new income-generating activities while poor households are more likely to engage in credit or gift exchange or to ration consumption. When we construct a stronger test for consumption smoothing, we find that changes in household income lead to modest changes in consumption. Covariant shocks, as measured by village/round dummies, always lead to changes in consumption. These results are robust to concerns regarding bias resulting from measurement error or endogeneity of changes in income. Lastly, we find that households with access to improved water control infrastructure are less vulnerable than those that rely on rainfall or the flooding of the Niger River." Authors' AbstractVulnerability ,Consumption shocks ,

Dietary diversity as a food security indicator

Household food security is an important measure of well-being. Although it may not encapsulate all dimensions of poverty, the inability of households to obtain access to enough food for an active, healthy life is surely an important component of their poverty. Accordingly, devising an appropriate measure of food security outcomes is useful in order to identify the food insecure, assess the severity of their food shortfall, characterize the nature of their insecurity (for example, seasonal versus chronic), predict who is most at risk of future hunger, monitor changes in circumstances, and assess the impact of interventions. However, obtaining detailed data on food security status—such as 24- hour recall data on caloric intakes—can be time consuming and expensive and require a high level of technical skill both in data collection and analysis. This paper examines whether an alternative indicator, dietary diversity, defined as the number of unique foods consumed over a given period of time, provides information on household food security. It draws on data from 10 countries (India, the Philippines, Mozambique, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, Mali, Malawi, Ghana, and Kenya) that encompass both poor and middle-income countries, rural and urban sectors, data collected in different seasons, and data on calories acquisition obtained using two different methods. ....[D]ietary diversity would appear to show promise as a means of measuring food security and monitoring changes and impact, particularly when resources available for such measurement are scarce.Food security. ,Poverty. ,Caloric intake. ,India. ,Philippines. ,Mozambique. ,Mexico. ,Bangladesh. ,Egypt. ,Mali. ,Malawi. ,Ghana. ,Kenya. ,Diet Developing countries. ,

Consumption soothing and vulnerability in the Zone Lacustre, Mali

"This paper explores risk sharing in the Zone Lacustre, Mali, as viewed through the lens of consumption smoothing. We find that idiosyncratic shocks appear to have little impact on consumption, and that households respond to these shocks in a variety of ways. In general, nonpoor households are more likely to enter into new income-generating activities while poor households are more likely to engage in credit or gift exchange or to ration consumption. When we construct a stronger test for consumption smoothing, we find that changes in household income lead to modest changes in consumption. Covariant shocks, as measured by village/round dummies, always lead to changes in consumption. These results are robust to concerns regarding bias resulting from measurement error or endogeneity of changes in income. Lastly, we find that households with access to improved water control infrastructure are less vulnerable than those that rely on rainfall or the flooding of the Niger River." Authors' AbstractVulnerability ,Consumption shocks ,

Investing in early childhood nutrition:

"It has long been known that good nutrition is essential to children's physical and cognitive development, but recent evidence sheds new light on the optimal timing of interventions to improve child nutrition and the long-term effects of such interventions. Recent studies have shown that undernutrition has a whole range of effects that impede not only children's nutrition and development in the short term, but also their cognitive abilities and productivity in adulthood, with measurable economic impacts. They have also shown that the window of opportunity for addressing child nutritional needs in ways that produce healthy, productive adults lasts from conception through age two. After that, the effects of undernutrition are largely irreversible. By addressing the large and severe problem of early childhood undernutrition in many poor countries, policymakers could maximize the effectiveness of investments designed to achieve overall development goals." from authors' abstractChildren, Nutrition, malnutrition, Undernutrition, Nutrition policy Developing countries,

Investing in development or investing in relief: Quantifying the poverty tradeoffs using Zimbabwe household panel data

This study examines the consequences of alternative relief and development interventions on the well being of households in rural Zimbabwe. It does so by: a) establishing a framework that links household resources to levels of poverty; b) validating the quantitative data with group wealth rankings by the households in the study; c) estimating key parameters within this framework, namely: the determinants of net crop income; the determinants of private transfers; and the links between increased incomes and the accumulation of capital stock; and d) conducting a counterfactual exercise in which relief assistance is reduced and reallocating these funds to improve access to agricultural extension and increased holdings of capital stock. Under these counterfactuals, the incidence and severity of poverty in non-drought years fall significantly. The best performing counterfactual, improving access to extension and increasing capital stock reduces the incidence of food poverty by 11 per cent. Under the most basic scenario, the increased income generated by transforming relief aid into agricultural capital is sufficient to fund an adequate diet for each person in each beneficiary household for six months. Further, such improvements in well being are achieved without households necessarily being made worse off during a drought year. These results suggest that for the households in this sample, there is a significant opportunity cost associated with the shift in external aid resources from development to emergency assistance.