Can all Cash Transfers Reduce Inequality?

Abstract

Over the last decade Targeting performance or so, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes have proliferated in Latin America and beyond. CCTs are designed to reduce poverty, both in the short and the long term. These programmes usually provide a cash transfer to poor families, conditioned on children’s school attendance and regular medical checks-ups of both children and pregnant women. CCTs are seen by many national governments and multilateral agencies as a cost-effective instrument to reduce poverty and provide the poor with opportunities. Overall, the sum of all transfers represents a very small share of national budgets and, obviously, even smaller fractions of national incomes. Still, CCTs can have a significant impact on poverty and inequality. (...)Ao longo da última década, os programas de Transferências Condicionadas de Renda (TCR) proliferaram na