Conditional Cash Transfers in (Brazil, Mexico, and Chile)

Conditional Cash Transfers in (Brazil, Mexico, and Chile)
Name
Institution
Conditional Cash Transfers in (Brazil, Mexico, and Chile)
Introduction
Studies reveal that conditional cash transfers (CCT) programs, as far as Latin America is concerned, have been increasingly appealing to quite a number of governments, bilateral as well as multinational agencies (Soares, 2007). In comparison with other social programs of economic evaluation, CCTs have shown quite some effectiveness when it comes to the realization of its objectives. Such significant impacts are well illustrated when it comes to health, child labor, schooling, infant mortality as well as poverty evaluations, though judging long-term impacts on development can be a bit challenging (Handa & Davis, 2006). Additionally, it must be noted that CCTs have indeed generated quite a number of expectations in ventures where they were not intended to generate impact such as chronic inequality that has for a long time afflicted the Latin American countries.
This essay investigates the various effects of CCT programs in Brazil, Chile as well as Mexico. It will be realized that in the periods dating back in mid-1990s and mid-2000s, the conditional cash transfer program immensely reduced the inequality in the above three countries. Research further reveals that it is a low-cost tool as far as reducing a replicated inequality is concerned (Laura & Rubio, 2005). Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the total amounts the program is capable of transferring is a bit modest in addition to the limited expansion it experiences from the administrative, political and even budgetary constraints. Moreover, this essay digs into a brief economic history of CCT in Chile, Mexico and Brazil, how the program started, the impacts it made in the aforementioned countries as well as how the other Latin American countries differ from Mexico, Brazil and Chile. Lastly, the paper will investigate the scale in which CCTs contributed towards the economic growth of the listed countries.
Economic History of CCTs in Chile, Brazil and Mexico
The recent decades in Latin American countries have been characterized by quite a number of idiosyncratic trends, unlike in other historical periods in which considerable synchronicity amongst these countries vis-à-vis distributional results, development strategies as well as growth patterns were concerned. Despite this, Chile, Brazil and Mexico have all successfully adopted quite important industrialization substitution in their late 1960s(Handa & Davis, 2006). For this reason, since 1974, studies reveal that their trajectories have all been different. For instance, in Chile, quite some substantial and remarkable growth has been recorded despite the growing inequality on the basis of an open economic strategy that many a times are highly dependent on just a few products.
Mexico on the other hand has also recorded reasonable growth, accompanied by falling inequality on the basis of the more recent economic openings through exports of her diverse products (Charity, 2009).However, it must be noted that she has heavily depended on the high import content as well as a single trading partner. Lastly, with reference to Brazil, the South American country has enjoyed some good level of trade linearization in addition to her diversified imports exports, and poor growth. However, it has been accompanied by falling inequality. With such trends of heterogeneity as far as the primary income evolution is concerned in these countries, it will be realized that Conditional Cash Transfers tend to be amongst the most reliable instruments for trade policies that has effectively reduced inequality all the way from Rio Bravo to Tierra del Fuego (Laura & Rubio, 2005).
Impacts of CCTs in Brazil, Mexico and Chile
Just before the year 2003, Brazil exhibited four CCT Federal programs. The first one was aimed towards the eradication of child labor way back in 1996. The program targeted cash transfer the children between ages 7 to 15 years received. These are the very children that worked in degrading and hazardous conditions. According to the program, every child living in the rural setup received R$ 25, while their counterparts in the urban setup received R$ 40(Handa & Davis, 2006). Moreover, a supplement was earmarked to increase schooling hours in municipalities, through the creation of after school activities. In other words, the program stipulated that children under the age of 16 years would not work in addition to maintaining more than 75 percent school attendance.
The second program, introduced in 2001 c...