Evaluating the impact of conditional cash transfer programs : lessons from Latin America

Unlike most development initiatives, conditional cash transfer programs recently introduced in the Latin America and the Caribbean region have been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness. These programs provide money to poor families, conditional on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital-such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers on a regular basis. Rawlings and Rubio review the experience in evaluating the impact of these programs, exploring the application of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation methods and summarizing results from programs launched in Brazil, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Evaluation results from the first generation of programs in Brazil, Mexico, and Nicaragua show that conditional cash transfer programs are effective in promoting human capital accumulation among poor households. There is clear evidence of success in increasing enrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raising household consumption. Despite this promising evidence, many questions remain unanswered about the impact of conditional cash transfer programs, including those concerning their effectiveness under different country conditions and the sustainability of the welfare impacts.Public Health Promotion,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Systems Development&Reform,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Poverty Assessment,Health Systems Development&Reform

Results readiness in social protection and labor operations : technical guidance notes for social safety nets task teams

Social Safety Nets (SSN) are defined as non?contributory transfer programs targeted to the poor or those vulnerable to poverty and shocks. About half of World Bank social protection projects in the reviewed cohort are SSN. They are mostly non?emergency investment operations with a higher presence in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa regions. Projects aimed at strengthening country's safety netssystem, including their targeting, administration and service quality, are the most common type of SSN interventions (25 percent). These are closely followed by conditional cash transfers (20 percent), and health, nutrition and education projects (15 percent). The remaining projects are a mixture of public works; food crisis mitigation measures and other types of safety nets (social inclusion, housing, and technical assistance).Safety Nets and Transfers,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Housing&Human Habitats,Population Policies

La contribución literaria de Moratín y otros hombres de letras al modelo de mujer doméstica

This paper tries to show the process of construction of the female identity developed in the Spanish society during the last decades of the Old Regime, which flows into the domestic woman model by the convergence of the Enlightenment and the Liberalism thought. The method chosen it was analyse several works of important writers of this period to observe how their literature pieces contributed to the creation and diffusion of the gender paradigms, female and male, like propagandist instrument of the bourgeois ideology.El objetivo de este trabajo es rastrear el proceso de construcción de la identidad femenina que se fue desarrollando en la sociedad española durante las décadas finales del Antiguo Régimen, que acabaría desembocando en el modelo de mujer doméstica, gracias a la convergencia del pensamiento ilustrado con las ideas del liberalismo. El método elegido ha sido centrarme en el análisis de determinadas obras de relevantes autores de la época para observar en qué medida el corpus literario de los hombres de letras contribuyó, no solo a la creación de los paradigmas genéricos, de la feminidad y de la masculinidad, sino también a la difusión de dicho modelo al haber convertido la literatura en uno de los instrumentos propagandísticos de la ideología burguesa

Asociacionismo femenino en la España del siglo XVIII: las Hermandades de Socorro de Mujeres.

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Historiar la vida cotidiana en la España Moderna

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Measuring governance and service delivery in safety net programs

This paper develops a framework to assess organizational performance in the delivery of social safety nets. Specifically, it provides guidance to task teams and program managers for identifying indicators of governance and service quality in targeted cash transfer programs. The paper identifies governance issues along the results chain of service delivery and suggests policyand performance indicators for assessing program inputs, human resources, financing and resource management; and program activities, operational procedures, Management Information Systems (MIS) and control. It also suggests indicators of organizational performance and the quality of outputs, including demand-side accountability mechanisms.Governance Indicators,National Governance,Public Sector Expenditure Policy,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Safety Nets and Transfers

Results readiness in social protection and labor operations

The main focus of the social protection and labor portfolio is on strengthening client's institutional capacity in the design and implementation of programs, but projects are not well equipped to track progress in this area. Correspondingly, there is a need to strengthen approaches to measuring and monitoring a'missing middle'of service delivery, precisely those areas for which counterpart institutions are responsible during the course of a project. In particular, better measures of the primary functions of social protection and labor agencies are needed, such as identifying and enrolling beneficiaries, targeting, payment systems, fraud and error control, performance monitoring of service delivery providers, responsiveness to citizens, transparency, efficiency, management information systems and monitoring and evaluation systems. New World Bank initiatives particularly standard core indicators by sector and the introduction of results based investment lending call for substantial improvements in the use of monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Impact evaluations are included in about half of projects and should continue to be used selectively and strategically, particularly when the program is innovative, replicable and/ or scalable to reach a broader set of beneficiaries, addresses a knowledge gap and is likely to have a substantial policy impact. Structuring evaluations around core themes with common outcome measures is fundamental to building a global knowledge base on development effectiveness.Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Poverty and Social Impact Analysis,E-Business,Safety Nets and Transfers,Housing&Human Habitats

Smartphone Abuse Amongst Adolescents: The Role of Impulsivity and Sensation Seeking

Adolescence is the stage of development where the reward and emotional regulation systems are yet to be adjusted and where most excessive behaviors start, like smartphone abuse. In addition, in this evolutionary period adolescents are more susceptible to behavioral changes through specific interventions or educational programs. Thus, it is fundamental to analyze the personality profile of those adolescents showing excessive mobile phone usage to properly approach later prevention strategies. Impulsivity is one of the most repeated variables associated with teenage addictions, although it has been observed that not all impulsive behaviors need to be detrimental. The aim of this study is to analyze how impulsivity affects smartphone addiction directly, but also indirectly, by assessing its association with sensation seeking variables (thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility) which are in turn decisive when using these technologies improperly. The sample was made up of 614 adolescents aged 13–18 attending secondary education from Burgos, Spain. Dickman Impulsivity Inventory, Sensation Seeking Scale, and Ad-hoc questionnaire on adolescent self-perception as to smartphone use were applied. Results show that 41.4% of participants admit to abusing smartphones sometimes, while 18.3% admit to abusing them more frequently and 24% to, at least ever, having defined themselves as smartphone addicts. Stepwise regression analysis revealed that gender (female), dysfunctional impulsivity and sensation seeking (disinhibition and thrill and adventure seeking) evidence 15.7% of variance in smartphone abuse. In addition, sensation seeking (thrill and adventure seeking, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility) were found to mediate the relationship between dysfunctional impulsivity and smartphone abuse. Therefore, dysfunctional impulsivity was directly connected with teenage smartphone abuse, but also had an indirect stronger association through thrill and adventure seeking, disinhibition and boredom susceptibility

II Seminario Hispano-Venezolano. «Poder y Mentalidades en España e Iberoamérica (siglos XVI-XX). Implicaciones y actores».

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