Conditional Cash-Transfers ~ Savvy Welfare...

The Economist spotlights Quid Pro Quo ~ Anti-Poverty Programmes, noting that "Doling out cash with strings attached is a good idea, but no panacea". Conditional Cash-Transfers (CCTs) are social payments given only if recipients ensure some beneficial act occurs, for instance, they send their kids to school or improve nutrition. On the positive side, they note...

"These programmes have swept across the developing world. In 1997 Mexico was one of only three countries to have a CCT programme. By 2008, as the World Bank documents in a new report, virtually every country in Latin America had one. So did Indonesia, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, Cambodia, Pakistan and Kenya. Some of these programmes are huge: Brazil’s Bolsa Familia serves 11m families."

But all is not universally glorious, since...

"...there is little evidence that CCTs raise educational standards (as opposed to attendance); and while children may go to clinics more, that does not mean their nutrition or immunisation rates improve. The programmes may not be to blame. The problem may lie with the dire quality of schools and clinics [since] a quarter of Indian schoolteachers were absent on any given day. CCTs, for all their advantages, cannot do much about that."