Conditional Income Transfers in Latin America: Palliatives for poverty?

Abstract

This text discusses the implementation of conditional income transfer programs in Latin America as a strategy to confront poverty in the region. It synthetically contextualizes Latin American development over time, using statistical data to reveal not only the high levels of poverty, but also educational and health conditions. These programs, as a rule, seek to alleviate and overcome poverty through monetary disbursements and fulfillment of health and educational agendas that, in thesis, increase the human capital of the poor and allow overcoming poverty in the long term. It concludes that despite the benefits for the families, the conditional income transfer programs of Latin America, on their own, are still not capable of confronting the structural poverty that marks the region, and are promoting palliatives for the poor living conditions, without overcoming them.