Conditional Cash Transfers, Job Markets and Capabilities in Latin-America: A Missing Link

The paper is part of an on-going joint project between the National University of Colombia and the University of Buenos Aires that is re-examining the achievements of conditional cash transfer programmes (CCTs) in the region. Within the acknowledgment of their diversity in terms of targeting, modalities and composition, CCTs have been mostly praised by international co-operation agencies, Latin-American governments and the academia. Nonetheless, there seems to be a missing link.  Social policy presents a strong relationship with how societies deal with dilemmas concerning social inclusion and justice within an increasingly competitive milieu articulating local and global dynamics.  Beyond technical debates related to CCTs financing and implementation there lays a key interrogative: do CCTs increase people’s capabilities and reduce key individual and household-related vulnerabilities? Do they provide access to a key asset such as greater job and income security? In 2012 the research project started to analyse six national CCTs programmes in the region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua) and two regional job markets (Argentina and Colombia). The paper present two interesting insights: a) so far the great majority of CCTs evaluations have been unable to present any solid result about medium or long-term improvements in the security of people’s livelihoods and capabilities, b) in the face of substantially unaltered rates of unemployment and informality; CCTs do not seem to have improved the participation of beneficiaries in the job market. These results are based both on the analysis of national and capital cities-based household’s surveys, and on programmes assessments and internally available data. Through the presentation of quantitative and qualitative the paper aims to contribute to the challenging of mainstream wisdoms on CCTs and to an already renewing debate in the region.