The impact of PROGRESA on community social relationships

This report examines the social costs arising from the PROGRESA programme in Mexico, focusing on community social relationships, which can be seen as a form of social capital. PROGRESA provides cash benefits linked to children’s school attendance and to regular clinic attendance, as well as in-kind health benefits and nutritional supplements. It also targets transfers directly to the mother of the family.

It is argued that PROGRESA’s system of household targeting involves social costs that should be taken into account when evaluating this system and considering alternative targeting systems. Communities exhibit social solidarity in terms of the common ways in which beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries evaluate the beneficiary selection process, outcomes and impacts. There is however evidence of problems that the targeting has introduced into community social relationships.

PROGRESA has also strengthened social relationships between beneficiary women, potentially building new forms of social capital. This is a valuable second-round effect of the programme. The creation of a group of ‘PROGRESA women’ who participate in separate activities can nevertheless reinforce social divisions, which need to be simultaneously addressed.

While there are good equity and efficiency arguments for household targeting, there are problems in practice. It is likely that correcting implementation problems in carrying out the census, renewing the early programme proposals for community review of beneficiary selection, and ensuring an effective and systematic appeal process would reduce these social problems. Even with the correction of mistakes, however, the social cost of targeting at the household level may be high in these communities where the distinctions made by the programme do not correspond with those of the people who see themselves as ‘all poor’ and ‘all in need.’

To avoid these social costs, geographic targeting could be used. Self-targeting is another alternative, giving everyone the opportunity to participate, while introducing obligations that discourage better-off people for whom the opportunity cost of complying is greater than the benefits received. A third opportunity is to continue household targeting, but widen the band of inclusion enough so that the differences within a community between the people who receive benefits and those who do not are rendered clear to the people who live there. Obtaining community perspectives on who is poor and not poor, and who is in need and not in need of PROGRESA, could be a starting point in designing a standard that could achieve that clarity and a greater level of acceptability.