Cash transfers
Lessons offered by Latin American cash transfer programmes, Mexico’s Oportunidades and Nicaragua’s SPN: implications for African countries
How effective are cash transfers to poor families in Mexico, Nicaragua, Zambia and Malawi?
Authors:
G. Ningenda; L.M. Gónzales-Robledo
Publisher:
Department for International Development Health Systems Resource Centre , 2005
This paper, published by the DFID Health Systems Resource Centre, discusses and compares cash transfer programmes intended to tackle poverty in Mexico, Nicaragua, Zambia and Malawi. The paper argues that transferring cash to families has many advantages: it is simple to administer and gives the families freedom to decide how to spend the money. However, in both Mexico and Nicaragua, targeting required a sophisticated set of data, and targeting the extreme poor remained difficult because the programme excluded families which were not close to both a school and a health centre. Sustainability is also an issue: the African programmes relied on support from donors, which may be less reliable than funding the programmes domestically.
The paper argues that there is not enough evidence from the Latin American programmes to determine whether conditions such as attendance at schools or health centres should be included in cash transfer programmes. It also notes that imposing such conditions increases demand for the services; the Nicaraguan programme coped with this by contracting non-government organisations to provide them. Key recommendations include incorporating the creation of job opportunities in the programmes as they are developed on a larger scale; and making provisions for evaluation of the programmes.
