Conditionality as Targeting? : Participation and Distributional Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers

Rodriguez-Castelan, Carlos

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: cash transfers;    social assistance;    poverty;    targeting;    welfare program design;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7940
RP-ID  :  WPS7940

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Conditional cash transfer programs,whereby transfers to households are conditional on schoolattendance or health checkups, have become a widespreadpolicy tool. They are viewed as a means of immediate povertyalleviation through the cash payments, and as a foundationof long-term poverty reduction through the emphasis on humancapital formation. Because targeted transfers are usuallyconditioned on the consumption of normal goods, richereligible households are more likely to consume moreeducational and health care opportunities than poorer ones.Thus, the eligible poorest households may benefit least fromconditional cash transfers even to the extent that they maynot participate at all. If conditionality is conceptualizedas a cost at the margin, it may be leading poor householdsto opt out. This paper proposes a framework to modelhousehold decision making on participation (or not) in cashtransfer programs depending on whether a conditionalityexists. The paper outlines the optimal size of the cashtransfer such that a fixed government budget maximizes thepoverty reduction. The paper also shows that unconditionalcash transfers may be preferable over conditional cashtransfers if a government has a sufficiently high degree ofpoverty aversion, that is, if, beyond the poverty headcount,the government cares about how poor the poor are or thedistance of the poorest among the poor below the povertyline. This basic argument carries over from income povertyto education poverty. The framework can be useful in shapingthe recent discussion on the merits of universal benefitsover conditional transfers in reducing poverty.