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Two Decades of Social Investment in Latin America: Outcomes, Shortcomings and Achievements of Conditional Cash Transfers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2016

Theodoros Papadopoulos  and
Ricardo Velázquez Leyer
Theodoros Papadopoulos
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath E-mail: T.Papadopoulos@bath.ac.uk
Ricardo Velázquez Leyer
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath E-mail: R.Velazquez.Leyer@bath.ac.uk
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Abstract

Conditional Cash Transfer programmes (CCTs) have been at the core of the remarkable expansion of social protection in Latin America in the early twenty-first century. Our article reviews the origins of CCTs in the Social Investment (SI) approach to social policy design, explores their characteristics and traces their expansion in Latin America. It further questions whether CCTs designed under the influence of SI can generate long-term substantial improvements in social outcomes. Our analysis suggests that while CCTs have evidently produced a number of positive outputs they are not, on their own, enough to achieve the aim of reducing poverty. CCTs appear to be more effective in poverty alleviation when they are accompanied by – or form part of – a wider package of measures that enhance social and employment rights, integrating workers into the formal economy under better conditions. We conclude that unless the structural deficiencies that shape many of the Latin American welfare regimes are addressed, the potential of social investment policies, like CCTs, to combat poverty will remain limited.

Keywords

CCTssocial investmentpoverty reductionLatin America social policy
Type
Themed Section on Assessing the Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin American Societies in the Early Twenty-First Century
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 435 - 449
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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