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Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs): A Child Policy Strategy in Asia

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Part of the book series: Quality of Life in Asia ((QLAS,volume 4))

Abstract

A new social policy tool emerged a little more than a decade in Latin America and in Asia that brought immediate relief in the form of cash to poor families with children and conditioned the benefits on behavioral changes that would affect the long-term well-being of beneficiary households. By conditioning benefits on school attendance and obtaining health-care and social support services, many countries especially those in Latin America were able to reverse intergenerational and intractable poverty rates. These programs, conditional cash transfers (CCTs), spread quickly throughout Latin America but have also become popular in other parts of the world. This paper looks at how CCTs have been used as a child policy strategy in Asia, summarizing the forms it has taken and the effectiveness of the programs in six Asian countries, and ends with a discussion of lessons learned from these experiences.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Means-tested programs are those that consider income and assets in establishing eligibility. They are most often targeted to the poor and sometimes known as social assistance cash benefits.

  2. 2.

    See Paxson and Schady (2007) and Schady and Araujo (2008).

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Correspondence to Shirley Gatenio Gabel .

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Gabel, S.G., Kamerman, S.B. (2013). Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs): A Child Policy Strategy in Asia. In: Yeung, WJ., Yap, M. (eds) Economic Stress, Human Capital, and Families in Asia. Quality of Life in Asia, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7386-8_12

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