Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades and the emergence of social assistance in Latin America

This paper provides an overview of the political and economic context under which Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades was introduced to prelude the emergence of social assistance in Latin America. The paper identifies four distinctive features of the programme that were revolutionary in their own right. First, the Progresa-Oportunidades embraced a multidimensional approach to poverty, linking income transfers with simultaneous interventions in health, education and nutrition. Second, the programme focused on the poor. This is in clear contrast to generalised food subsidies and other targeted interventions that dominated the antipoverty agenda in the past. Third, the programme followed a complex system of identification and selection of beneficiaries to prevent discretionary political manipulation of public funds. Finally, an independent impact evaluation protocol proved to be critical for both improving the programme’s effectiveness and strengthening its legitimacy across different political factions and constituencies. The paper concludes that the success of Progresa-Oportunidades must be understood in a broader context, where a harsh economic and political environment, coupled with a rapid democratisation and increasing political competition, laid down the foundations for the introduction and then sustained expansion of the programmesocial assistance, poverty, human development, Latin America, Mexico

The impact of credit on income poverty in urban Mexico. An endogeneity-corrected estimation

In recent years, an important number of impact studies have attempted to examine the effect of credit on income poverty; however, many of these studies have not paid sufficient attention to the problems of endogeneity and selection bias. The few exceptional cases have employed econometric techniques that work at the village level. The problem is that the concept of village is inappropriate in the urban context where a large percentage of microfinance organisations in the developing world actually operate. This paper presents an econometric approach which controls for endogeneity and self-selection using data from a quasi-experiment designed at the household level, and conducted in three urban settlements in the surroundings of the Metropolitan area of Mexico City. The paper provides an estimation of the impact of credit, employing different equivalence scales in order to measure the sensitivity of the poverty impact to the intra-household distribution of welfare. We find a link between poverty impacts and lending technology. Group-based lending programmes are more effective in reducing the poverty gap but in doing so, they achieve insignificant impacts on the poverty incidence. By contrast, individual lending programmes reported significant and small impacts at the upper limits of deprivation but insignificant impacts on the poverty gap.endogeneity; selection bias; microfinance; credit; income poverty; impact analysis; Mexico

Microcredit, labour, and poverty impacts in urban Mexico

Improved household accessibility to credit is identified as a significant determinant of intra-household re-allocation of labour resources with important implications for productivity, income, and poverty status. However, credit accessibility could also have wider impacts on poverty if it leads to new hires outside the household. This paper contributes to the existing literature on microcredit in two important ways: first, it investigates the routes through which microcredit reaches those in poverty outside the household. We test whether, by lending to the vulnerable non-poor, microcredit programmes can indirectly benefit poor labourers through increased employment. Second, we conduct the study in the spatial dimension of urban poverty Mexico. This is relevant when considering that, unlike in rural areas, labour often represents the only source of livelihoods to the extreme poor. Our findings point to significant trickle-down effects of microcredit that benefit poor labourers; however, these effects are only observed after loan-supported enterprising households achieve earnings well above the poverty line. The paper concludes with reflections on the policy implications.Mexico, microcredit, labour, poverty

Social transfers and chronic poverty: objectives, design, reach and impact

In the first decade of the new century, social transfer programmes emerged as a new paradigm in the fight against poverty in the global South. These programmes currently reach more than 860 million people worldwide. This paper focuses on three policy questions: first, do programme objectives address chronic poverty? Second, are programme design features – the identification and selection of beneficiaries, delivery mechanisms and complementary interventions – effective in reaching chronically poor households? And third, do social assistance programmes benefit the chronically poor? The paper finds that by promoting longer-term human capital investment and protecting household assets and facilitating asset building, social transfers can directly or indirectly tackle persistent deprivation. The discussion notes that current knowledge on the outcomes of social transfers encourages strong expectations on its potential role in addressing long-term poverty, but that this can only be confirmed when current programmes reach maturity. This draws attention to the importance of extending the scope, depth and especially length of academic research into these relevant questions.social protection; chronic poverty, programme design

A proposal for the management of data driven services in smart manufacturing scenarios

205 p.This research work focuses on Industrial Big Data Services (IBDS) Providers, a specialization of ITServices Providers. IBDS Providers constitute a fundamental agent in Smart Manufacturing scenarios,given the wide spectrum of complex technological challenges involved in the adoption of the requireddata-related IT by manufacturers aiming at shifting their businesses towards Smart Manufacturing. Theoverarching goal of this research work is to provide contributions that (a) help the business sector ofIBDS Providers to manage their collaboration projects with manufacturing partners in order to deploy therequired data-driven services in Smart Manufacturing scenarios, and (b) adapt and extend existingconceptual, methodological, and technological proposals in order to include those practical elements thatfacilitate their use in business contexts. The main contributions of this dissertation focus on three specificchallenges related to the early stages of the data lifecycle, i.e. those stages that ensure the availability ofnew data to exploit, coming from monitored manufacturing facilities: (1) Devising a more efficient datastorage strategy that reduces the costs of the cloud infrastructure required by an IBDS Provider tocentralize and accumulate the massive-scale amounts of data from the supervised manufacturingfacilities; (2) Designing the required architecture for the data capturing and integration infrastructure thatsustains an IBDS Provider's platform; (3) The collaborative design process with partnering manufacturersof the required data-driven services for a specific manufacturing sector

Industria creativa para la renovación urbana

Artículo de gradoEl impacto de las zonas industriales en las ciudades requiere acciones concretas para recuperar estos territorios. El sector de la zona industrial en Bogotá presenta distintas facetas de este fenómeno que altera las dinámicas sociales, afectando directamente la configuración del espacio urbano. El presente artículo presenta alternativas para recuperar estás zonas de acuerdo a las características de la zona industrial los ejidos, además del fortalecimiento de las actividades por medio de proponer usos complementarios que se vinculen con los existentes de comercio e industria. Las estrategias de producción alternativas se presentan como herramienta innovadora para devolverle un espacio útil a la ciudad.INTRODUCCIÓN METODOLOGÍA RESULTADOS DISCUSIÓN CONCLUSIONES REFERENCIAS ANEXOSPregradoArquitect

Social protection in sub-Saharan Africa: Will the green shoots blossom?

This paper provides an overview of the recent extension of social protection in sub-Saharan Africa. It identifies two main ‘models’ of social protection in the region: the Southern Africa and Middle Africa models. It then assesses the contrasting policy processes behind these models and examines the major challenges they face as regards financing, institutional capacity and political support. It concludes that, for an effective institutional framework for social protection to evolve in sub-Saharan African countries, the present focus on the technical design of social protection programmes needs to be accompanied by analyses that contribute to also ‘getting the politics right’social protection, poverty, transfer programmes, sub-Saharan Africa

Enseñanza de la geometría en población invidente y de baja visión

En este artículo se realizó un corto análisis acerca de una actividad planeada para el área de Matemáticas, específicamente dentro del ámbito geométrico el cual tiene como finalidad la enseñanza de la geometría dentro de la diversidad del aula. Por ello surge esta propuesta dentro del contorno del aula inclusiva, caso de las matemáticas como área excluyente, para determinar las relaciones particulares de las poblaciones con discapacidad visual con los distintos contenidos y destrezas matemáticas en el contexto escolar ordinario

Global Inequality:Relatively Lower, Absolutely Higher

This paper measures trends in global interpersonal inequality during 1975–2010 using data from the most recent version of the World Income Inequality Database (WIID). The picture that emerges using ‘absolute,’ and even ‘centrist’ measures of inequality, is very different from the results obtained using standard ‘relative’ inequality measures such as the Gini coefficient or Coefficient of Variation. Relative global inequality has declined substantially over the decades. In contrast, ‘absolute’ inequality, as captured by the Standard Deviation and Absolute Gini, has increased considerably and unabated. Like these ‘absolute’ measures, our ‘centrist’ inequality indicators, the Krtscha measure and an intermediate Gini, also register a pronounced increase in global inequality, albeit, in the case of the latter, with a decline during 2005 to 2010. A critical question posed by our findings is whether increased levels of inequality according to absolute and centrist measures are inevitable at today's per capita income levels. Our analysis suggests that it is not possible for absolute inequality to return to 1975 levels without further convergence in mean incomes among countries. Inequality, as captured by centrist measures such as the Krtscha, could return to 1975 levels, at today's domestic and global per capita income levels, but this would require quite dramatic structural reforms to reduce domestic inequality levels in most countries