Fernald – conditional cash transfer programs

Conditional cash transfer programs work by transferring cash to, usually the mother in the household. The idea with conditional cash transfers is that they address two needs: a short-term need and a long term goal. The first goal in terms of the short term need that a family has need for cash, that it can relieve that sort of acute pressure. For example: a child is hungry, a child needs shoes, a house need a roof, a child needs a bicycle; that it can relieve that kind of pressure.  

And then the second goal is achieved by the conditionalities of the transfer. So the cash part is alleviating the short term need, and the conditionality means that in order to receive the cash, households have to comply with a series of behaviours, and what those behaviours relate to, there are a variety of different kind of behaviours, but in general they relate to positive health and education behaviours. So this means that in the case of a pregnant woman, that she needs to attend a health clinic on a regular basis. This means that children attend regular growth monitoring checkups, that they receive micronutrient supplementation if they are undernourished or having any growth faltering, and this mean that for older kids that they go to school 85 per cent of the time. There’s some requirements for older adults, but it’s really focused on the younger children, on households with young children I guess I should say.