Comparison Of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs And Poverty

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Both countries chose to create Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) to fight short term poverty and hopefully put an end to intergenerational poverty as well. According to the World Bank, Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) programs provide cash payments to poor household that meet certain behavioral requirements, generally related to children’s health care and education. The signature of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 by Mexico was the beginning of serious social policies being put in place. Programs such as Procampo which focused on helping farmers after the NAFTA alliance, or Progresa (Programa de Educacion, Salud, y Alimentacion) later called Oportunidades is now Mexico’s most important antipoverty program and …show more content…

In 2003, the Zero Hunger (Fome Zero) project inaugurated by President Lula led to a merging of Brazil’s past policies which then became a national program: the Bolsa Familia. The program was very similar to the Oportunadades one of Mexico. Both have shown tremendous inequality decreases and also decreased poverty for a while. “The contribution of programs such as Bolsa Familia (Brazil) and Progresa/Oportunidades (Mexico) shows the remarkable power of well-targeted cash transfers to the poor in redistributing income and reducing inequality (and, of course, poverty). Those programs are a small share of total government redistributive spending (and GDP), but they go a long way toward redistributing income to the bottom of the distribution.” (Lopez-Calva et al. 16-17) Although inequality had been declining in both Mexico and Brazil, the crisis affected both countries very differently. The 2008 financial crisis is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The stock market, housing market, and financial institutions suffered the most from this economic