Mission (Im)possible? Getting CCTs to Break the Intergenerational Poverty Cycle. Lessons from Mexico and El Salvador

During the last three decades, Latin America has gone through different economic development periods which have affected its political and social dynamics. As a response to these challenging conditions, the state has undertaken diverse social policy measures in order to protect the most vulnerable groups of population. One of the new strategies in order to fight against poverty, to foster social inclusion and to overcome inequalities is the conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. CCT programmes have come to dominate the social protection sector in Latin America over the last ten years. At this moment almost all countries in the region are implementing such a programme or are in various stages of discussion on the benefits of implementing programmes of this type. CCTs are as well increasingly being promoted as best practice in the social sector for developing countries in other parts of the world, and have spurred debates over the relative merit of cash- versus food-based transfers. CCTs have the two-folded objective of combining long-run human capital development with short-term poverty alleviation and most of the programmes have established monitoring and evaluation systems in order to check if the programmes are achieving their goals