Social Protection for the Poorest

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) represent an innovation in social assistance policy by conditioning welfare benefits on recipients’ behaviors associated with human capital development. Although social assistance has expanded throughout the developing world in the 21st century, the political logic guiding CCT adoption differs sharply from that of unconditional cash transfers, and from the politics of social insurance development. Striking spatial and temporal correlations in their adoption also raise the specter of policy interdependence. A dynamic logit analysis of social assistance reforms in developing nations from 1990 to 2011 reveals that although CCTs have been impelled by democratization in developing countries, the model is not embraced systematically by the left or the right of the political spectrum. Rather, CCTs are more likely to be adopted in contexts of divided government and where regional neighbors, and more democratic countries in the region, have previously adopted them.