Conditionality in Public Policy Targeted to the Poor: Promoting Resilience?

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Bastagli
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Conditional Cash Transfers ◽  
Multiple Channels ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
The Poor

This paper explores the role of conditionality in policies targeting the poor. By requiring beneficiaries to send their children to school and to undertake regular health visits, proponents argue, conditionalities improve human capital outcomes, promoting resilience. This widespread perception has led to the adoption of conditional cash transfers in many countries. Yet policy debate on conditionality does not always reflect a full appreciation of how behavioural, administrative and political economy variables influence outcomes. This paper identifies the multiple channels through which conditionality determines human capital outcomes and reviews the evidence on linkages between conditionality and processes of resilience.

scholarly journals Conditional Cash Transfers, Public Provision of Private Goods, and Income Redistribution

2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 491-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Firouz Gahvari ◽  
Enlinson Mattos
Keyword(s):  
Income Redistribution ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Conditional Cash Transfers ◽  
Public Provision ◽  
Indivisible Good ◽  
Private Goods ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Screening Device

This paper examines the role of cash transfers as a screening device when combined with in-kind transfers. It shows that linking in-kind to cash transfers makes first-best redistribution possible despite the government's inability to tell rich and poor individuals apart. Moreover, the maximal attainable welfare for the poor can be pushed beyond its first-best level by distorting downward the quality of the indivisible good the poor receive relative to the cash value of their net transfers. Using in-kind transfers alone, as in Besley and Coate (1991), leads to a third-best solution. (JEL D31, H23, H41)

In-cash Transfers: from Passive to Empowered Beneficiaries in the Global South

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Katarina Pitasse Fragoso
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Cash Transfer ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Public Services ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Public Policy Decisions

Over the last few years, there has been an increase in discussions advocating in-cash programmes as a way to alleviate poverty. Indeed, this represents a leap forward in comparison to in-kind programmes. However, little progress, at least in developing countries, has been achieved in answering the question of how the state should transfer the means of redressing deprivation to those who are living in poverty. This article addresses this issue by challenging anti-poverty programmes through a social-egalitarian framework. My main argument starts from the perspective that in-cash transfers are a necessary but not sufficient mechanism for poverty alleviation. I acknowledge that cash alone does not guarantee the poor an equally active role in influencing the public-policy decisions that affect their lives. I then suggest a participatory device to complement the cash-transfer proposal in order to give institutional opportunities to the poor to decide, together with practitioners, what should be done at the level of local public services.

Conclusion: reform and innovation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha A. Shave
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Process Approach ◽  
National Legislation ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Reform And Innovation

The first half of this chapter examines the implications of these findings for our understandings of several areas of the poor laws: local ideas and policy transfer, national legislation and policy-making. The second half of the conclusion focuses on the influences upon the development of the poor laws. It examines the role of stakeholders and key actors, each with distinct roles in the policy process across both the old and New Poor Law eras. The chapter finishes by discussing more broadly how the policy process approach can be applied to understand reform and innovation in the broader field of social and public policy.

scholarly journals Some Uses of Happiness Data in Economics

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Di Tella ◽  
Robert MacCulloch
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Empirical Measures ◽  
Happiness Research ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Individual Welfare

Happiness research is based on the idea that it is fruitful to study empirical measures of individual welfare. The most common is the answer to a simple well-being question such as “Are you Happy?” Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been asked this question, in many countries and over many years. Researchers have begun to use these data to tackle a variety of important questions in economics. Some require strong assumptions concerning interpersonal comparisons of utility, but others make only mild assumptions in this regard. They range from microeconomic questions, such as the way income and utility are connected, to macroeconomic questions such as the tradeoff between inflation and unemployment, including large areas in political economy. Public policy is another area where progress using happiness data is taking place. Given the central role of utility notions in economic theory, we argue that the use of happiness data in empirical research should be given serious consideration.

Conclusion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lily Chumley
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Creative Class ◽  
Service Economy ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Urban Service ◽  
Maxim Gorky

This concluding chapter considers a question posed by Maxim Gorky in 1932: “On which side are you, ‘Masters of Culture’?” Examining the role of creative human capital in an urban service economy by analyzing a 2008 propaganda video titled “Reunion,” this chapter shows how the “creative class” is positioned intermediate to the socialist class categories of capital and labor. The culture workers who are supposed to transform the nation, the culture, and the economy with their innovative potential appear as labor to capital (in the person of the client or collector) and capital to labor (in the person of working-class service providers). Their professional activities can be framed as either authorial power or subaltern service, depending on context. This ambivalence demonstrates the antinomies of class in China's already postsocialist, but increasingly postindustrial, political economy.

scholarly journals Some Useful Sources

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-512
Author(s):  
Theodoros Papadopoulos ◽  
Ricardo Velázquez Leyer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Conditional Cash Transfers ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The World

The literature on social protection in Latin America – and more specifically on Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) – is substantial and growing as, increasingly, more academics from around the world seem to be attracted to social policy developments in the region and the role of CCTs in these developments. As the articles in our themed section cite many of the key sources on particular aspects of CCTs, we chose in this guide to highlight those sources we consider essential for any academic interested to investigate CCTs and, more broadly, the development of social policies in Latin America for research or teaching purposes.

Food Stamp Participation by Emergency Food Recipients

1994 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Curtis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Human Organization

Despite long-term interest in poverty in the United States, and the increasing role of applied and practicing anthropologists as producers and consumers of policy research, anthropologists have not yet had much impact on the welfare policy debate. That debate rests on certain widespread assumptions about the causes and consequences of poverty, the characteristics of the poor, and the effectiveness of proposals to eliminate poverty. As Brett Williams points out, discussions of poverty and welfare have been dominated by economists, who count and classify the poor, and journalists, who depict the poor as isolated and pathological ("Poverty Among African Americans in the Urban United States," Human Organization 51,2[1992]:164-174).

scholarly journals LAND REFORMS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Gersbach ◽  
Lars-H. R. Siemers
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Land Markets ◽  
Human Capital Formation ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Rights Issues

We examine the nexus between land transfers and human capital formation. A sequence of land redistributions enables the beneficiaries to educate their children and thus to escape from poverty. A successful land reform allows the transition of a society from an agriculture-based state of poverty to a human capital–based developed economy. We find that a temporary state of inequality among the poor is unavoidable. Finally, we discuss the political economy of land reform, whether access to land markets should be allowed for beneficiaries of land reforms, and property rights issues.

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