Development strategies and law in an unequal Latin America. The impact of conditional cash transfers on poverty and education in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia

Resumo

In the last two decades conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have undergone a remarkable expansion around the world, particularly in Latin America, and have become a key component of poverty reduction strategies in developing countries. CCTs typically pay monetary transfers to the poor with the goal of improving outcomes in different social spheres such as education, health, and employment, among others. They share a common structure consisting of three components: a cash transfer, a targeting mechanism, and a conditionality. This study analyzes CCTs as a tool for policy intervention on demand for human capital through a comparative case study of Argentina’s Asignación Universal por Hijo, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, Chile’s Sistema Solidario, and Colombia’s Familias en Acción. Through a comparative analysis of national statistics from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, this research study investigates the potential impact of these CCT programs on poverty and educational outcomes by testing the correlation between program implementation and changes measured through national school censuses and microdata from representative household surveys, and in the Argentine case, it measures the impact of CCTs on education outcomes through the correlation between CCT recipient households and their decisions regarding the educational behavior of school-aged children. Additionally, the study will offer recommendations for program design, implementation, and impact by combining statistical results with a review of official documents, interviews with policy makers and public officials in Argentina and Colombia, and previous research and official documentation from Brazil and Chile. This study will make three main contributions. First, it will pay close attention to the design, implementation, and impact of the Asignación Universal por Hijo CCT program, and analyze it in comparison with other Latin American CCTs, such as Bolsa Familia, Sistema Solidario, and Familias en Acción. Second, it will use a combination of comparative analysis, cross-disciplinary methodology, and quantitative and qualitative methods to generate evidence of the impact of the Argentine, Brazilian, Chilean and Colombian programs, focusing on their impact on poverty reduction in the first three cases, and on education in the first and last cases. Third, it will assess descriptive analyses of the changes found in poverty and inequality data in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile using CEPAL and OCDE Data and of the changes found in education outcomes in Argentina and Colombia using IPUMS-I census data and National Survey Data. Finally, the dissertation presents an innovative non-experimental strategy for measuring the economic impact of CCTs on education outcomes around the world, using official public National Survey Data, which can be found in almost every country. To this regard, this dissertation presents the Argentine Asignación Universal por Hijo as a case study that can be replicated in other countries in Latin America and around the world. In conclusion, this study shows that CCTs have become an essential component of poverty reduction strategies in developing countries such as Brazil, Chile and Colombia, and also as an extension of social security benefits, as is the case in Argentina. CCTs are not replacing the social protection system, but they are offering a new, innovative way to make social services and social rights more accessible to low-income families. In this sense, CCTs can help governments fulfill their socioeconomic obligations under human rights law, such as ensuring an adequate standard of living and increasing their poorest citizens’ accessibility to education and health services. However, the research shows that while CCTs may slightly increase enrollment and decrease dropout rates, they have a negative impact on grade promotion outcomes. The results demonstrate that CCTs may have certain success in making education services more accessible to the poorest populations and in ensuring that these groups continue taking advantage of these services as it is a requirement for keeping their program benefits, but little has been done to improve education services to help those who face the greatest difficulties advance in the educational system. These groups would benefit not only from access to the educational system, but also from the ability to learn and progress through grade levels in order to be able to access higher education, which in turn would provide access to better working conditions and the sought-after impact on poverty.