In 1997, Mexico launched a new incentive-based poverty reduction program to enhance the human capital of those living in extreme poverty. This book presents a case study of Progresa-Oportunidades, focusing on the main factors that have contributed to the program's sustainability, policies that have allowed it to operate at the national level, and future challenges.
PROGRESA is one of the Mexican government's major programs aimed at developing the human capital of poor households. In early 1998, IFPRI was asked to assist Mexico's government to determine if PROGRESA was functioning as it was intended to. This research report synthesizes IFPRI's findings about PROGRESA's impact and operation. The majority of IFPRI's findings suggest that PROGRESA's combination of education, health, and nutrition interventions into one integrated package has had a significant positive impact on the welfare and human capital of poor rural families. The report will interest researchers, policymakers, and advisers seeking a better sense of the basic elements of a program that can be effective in alleviating poverty in the short and long run.
Over the past fifteen years, people in low- and middle-income countries have experienced a health revolution—one that has created new opportunities and brought new challenges. It is a revolution that keeps mothers and babies alive, helps children grow, and enables adults to thrive. Millions Saved: New Cases of Proven Success in Global Health chronicles the global health revolution from the ground up, showcasing twenty-two local, national, and regional health programs that have been part of this global change. The book profiles eighteen remarkable cases in which large-scale efforts to improve health in low- and middle-income countries succeeded, and four examples of promising interventions that fell short of their health targets when scaled-up in real world conditions. Each case demonstrates how much effort—and sometimes luck—is required to fight illness and sustain good health. The cases are grouped into four main categories, reflecting the diversity of strategies to improve population health in low-and middle-income countries: rolling out medicines and technologies; expanding access to health services; targeting cash transfers to improve health; and promoting population-wide behavior change to decrease risk. The programs covered also come from various regions around the world: seven from sub-Saharan Africa, six from Latin America and the Caribbean, five from East and Southeast Asia, and four from South Asia.
Why has an economy that has done so many things right failed to grow fast? Under-Rewarded Efforts traces Mexico’s disappointing growth to flawed microeconomic policies that have suppressed productivity growth and nullified the expected benefits of the country’s reform efforts. Fast growth will not occur doing more of the same or focusing on issues that may be key bottlenecks to productivity growth elsewhere, but not in Mexico. It will only result from inclusive institutions that effectively protect workers against risks, redistribute towards those in need, and simultaneously align entrepreneurs’ and workers’ incentives to raise productivity.
"Argues that incoherent social programs significantly contribute to poverty and little growth. Proposes converting the existing social security system into universal social entitlements. Advocates eliminating wage-based social security contributions and raising consumption taxes on higher-income households to increase the rate of GDP growth, reduce inequality, and improve benefits for workers"--Provided by publisher.
Throughout the twentieth century, much of the population in Latin America lacked access to social protection. Since the 1990s, however, social policy for millions of outsiders - rural, informal, and unemployed workers and dependents - has been expanded dramatically. Social Policy Expansion in Latin America shows that the critical factors driving expansion are electoral competition for the vote of outsiders and social mobilization for policy change. The balance of partisan power and the involvement of social movements in policy design explain cross-national variation in policy models, in terms of benefit levels, coverage, and civil society participation in implementation. The book draws on in-depth case studies of policy making in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico over several administrations and across three policy areas: health care, pensions, and income support. Secondary case studies illustrate how the theory applies to other developing countries.
This book reflects on current thinking in development economics and on what may happen over the next two decades. As well as studying development economics in retrospect, the volume explores the current debates and challenges and looks forward at the problems that affect the global capacity to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
Listen to the podcast about Cory Blad's chapter in this book 'Searching for Saviors: Economic Adversities and the Challenge of Political Legitimacy in the Neoliberal Era'. This book seeks to explore welfare responses by questioning and going beyond the assumptions found in Esping-Andersen’s (1990) broad typologies of welfare capitalism. Specifically, the project seeks to reflect how the state engages, and creates general institutionalized responses to, market mechanisms and how such responses have created path dependencies in how states approach problems of inequality. Moreover, if the neoliberal era is defined as the dissemination and extension of market values to all forms of state institutions and social action, the need arises to critically investigate not only the embeddedness of such values and modes of thought in different contexts and institutional forms, but responses and modes of resistance arising from practice that might point to new forms of resilience.
Nation-states in the developing world have seen a renaissance in their political, social, and economic structures. Newly industrializing countries like Brazil, Mexico, China, and India are poised to claim the 21st century as their own. But economic conditions in many nations of the developing world still leave much to be desired, especially with respect to its marginalized citizens, whose incomes are often less than two dollars a day. Scholars continue to ask what academics, political actors, economic entrepreneurs, and others—committed to tackling the bane of underdevelopment in the developing world—can do to improve the plight of these nations’ destitute populations. The Developing World: Critical Issues in Politics and Society explores the challenges presented by political, cultural, religious, social, and economic practices to the future development of these nation-states. The essays gathered here—written by seasoned scholars with deep social, political, and academic roots in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—explain how improvements in politics, social arrangements, and information communication technologies contribute to the effectiveness of emerging nations’ internal politics and their influence on world affairs. Individual essays consider such key issues as how to develop more efficiently the processes of liberal democratization how to apply more uniformly the law enforcement policies of governments to all citizens in a society how the marginalization of women hampers national development how the political development of Mexico as a “linguistic regional power” has influenced the rest of Central America how development and protection of the environment are linked how an effective application of information communication technologies can enhance the quality of education and boost growth at all levels in a polity This work will interest scholars focused on the developing world, social and public policy, international politics, and social and political theory.
