Conditional cash transfers

On April 29^th, the Global Assets Project hosted an event to launch its newest policy brief, "Savings-Linked Conditional Cash Transfers: A New Policy Approach to Global Poverty Reduction," at the New America Foundation. By request, we have created a 10 minute Podcast summarizing the paper and key points from the event, for those unable to attend the two-hour event or watch or listen to it in its entirety on our website or YouTube. 

I've blogged about conditional cash transfers (CCTs) before, but when I opened my inbox yesterday morning to find an email notifying me of Proyecto Capital's website launch, I couldn't help but keep writing about it.

Proyecto Capital is a regional initiative (affiliated with the Global Assets Project) that seeks to support governments within Latin America and the Caribbean in the design, implementation, and evaluation of savings-linked conditional cash transfer (CCT) policies, with the goal of facilitating the enhancement and protection of the poor, primarily through asset building.

At yesterday's launch of the World Bank Policy Research Report, Conditional Cash Transfers: Reducing Present and Future Poverty, New York Times contributing writer Tina Rosenberg recounted her article pitch to her editors at the Times.  Asking her why she was so intent on going to Mexico to cover Oportunidades, the conditional cash transfer program that started it all, she answered: Because it's a social policy program that actually works. 

From Latin America, to Africa, to even the United States, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are sprouting everywhere and garnering an increasing amount of attention.  As the packed auditorium demonstrated yesterday, the buzz has long since reached Washington.  And as Justin Lin, Chief Economist for Development Economics, noted, the World Bank will be extending CCT projects to six additional countries this year.

In the scramble of eager participants that shot their hands up breathlessly to seize their chance to ask their multi-part queries to the pre-eminent experts on CCTs, I didn't have the chance to ask the question in the back of my mind: How can CCTs be used to incentivize and change savings and asset-building behavior?

Its last day of the Better World Campaign's On Day One project and there is still time to vote for the idea you think President-Elect Barak Obama should prioritize on the first day of the next administration for improving the United State's image in the world.  When blogger Mark Goldberg of the UN Foundation came to New America in the spring of 2008 soliciting ideas for policy proposals, I thought it was little more than a fun experiment in the use of new media to express opinions. I had no idea the Campaign would face the ideas off against each other in November, narrowing 81 selected ideas down to 9 for '09 (9 big ideas for the incoming president to consider upon taking office). Or that my idea to reform foreign assistance (to focus the allocation of funds more squarely on the social and economic empowerment of poor people) would win the Global Poverty category. Or that there would be a Round 2 to the contest in which the 9 for '09 would face off yet again.