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

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.

Keywords: child policy, Asia, conditional cash transfers, children, developing countries