Conditional Cash Transfers and child protection outcomes: sticks or carrots?
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have gained unprecedented popularity as a social protection intervention and are no longer exclusively found in Latin America but being implemented across the globe. Its appeal lies in the combination of poverty reduction through the provision of cash with behavioural change by tying the receipt of cash to specific conditions that aim to improve outcomes in other dimensions of wellbeing, most notably for children…However, the current debate around CCTs is in danger of being romanticised. Apart from strong moral and ideological considerations denouncing the conditional element of CCTs, perverse incentives and unintended side-effects of CCTs can negatively influence children’s outcomes.
Reading Development 