This week's Economist has an article and an editorial praising the benefits of conditional cash transfer programs. These programs, which I previously mentioned here, pay the mothers in poor families when their children attend school full time or receive regular medical checkups. This encourages parents to send their children to school (rather than have them work) and gives the family a chance to break the cycle of poverty.
Most importantly, the programs are astoundingly successful. More children attend school, less children show symptoms of malnutrition, and fewer children live in extreme poverty. The program also successfully targets the lowest income brackets, who are often left out of other government programs.
An op-ed in today's Miami Herald by Jerry Haar says the US pays plenty of attention to Latin America, says the region is responsible for its own problems and lack of leadership, and suggests some economic reforms for the region. These reforms include fixing the tax structure, eliminating bureaucracy and regulations that impede business, improving property rights and cleaning up judicial systems. Oppenheimer also wrote about those issues yesterday.
While those reforms are all positive goals, none of them really address the immediate concerns of the poor. Someone like Chavez is popular because he appears to put food on the tables of the poor, which if you live on less than $2 per day, seems more important than reforming tax structures or improving infrastructure. Economic experts can sit around and talk about how populist leaders have or will destroy economic infrastructure and stifle development (which Chavez has done), but no sane person will vote for their children to go hungry tonight in the name of macroeconomics. Politics is local and politics is immediate. Economists like Haar can blame the poor for voting against their long term interests or they can start developing programs that balance macro-development with today's concerns.
What makes paying parents to send their children to school so successful is that it manages to alleviate some immediate effects of poverty while building a strong foundation for long term development. It's not a perfect program, and it alone will not eliminate poverty. But it should serve as an example that understanding both politics and economics can create development programs that are both effective and popular. Blaming the poor and peppering politicians with economic theory will not.
5 comments:
Nice post, well said, I agree completely. Until the opposition can come up with a strategy that specifically targets the poor, Chavez's base will remain. Bolsa Escola is an innovative program, but what about later on, when the trade off between getting a high school or college diploma is money from entering the workforce? Good jobs are just simply not available for many university graduates in Latin America, thus reducing the incentive to stay in school.
I wrote about Brazil's program here when BH was on Blogger.
What's also important is not just keeping the kids in school, but keeping them from having to work.
Christian brings up a very good point, however, and that is the issue of underemployment. Many of those who emigrated from Brazil to the US in the 1980's (my wife included) were college educated people with virtually no future in Brazil.
Christian does have a good point. It'll take a few days to come up with a decent answer. :)
Right now Bolivia is fighting over the revenues from the current hydrocarbons law. These funds are funneled through the different municipalities and universities, both of which are pretty corrupt.
I, too, wrote about the possibility of using the hydrocarbons fund to give direct payment to Bolivianos in a similar manner. It's a nice incentive, but I don't think Bolivia is capable of such a program, yet.
I would rather see these revenues go directly to the people instead of politicians and university politicians taking their cut.
I think a program is possible in Bolivia. One thing to be concerned about, however, is whether Bolivia has enough schools and teachers. I'm not sure what the attendence rate is for children, but in some countries when this has been tried, so many new students showed up at schools that it overwhelmed the educational infrastructure. It's a good reason to test these programs in small areas or to select groups before rolling them out nationwide.
Post a Comment