Introduction Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs award cash payments to poor households that

In the past 25 Years, poverty has been a steady condition in United States history. Not only that, but today there is even more discussion focused on poverty. More and more aid seems to be going to minorities. This segment of the population has retracted to working multiple jobs while taking care of children (Glennerster). Therefore,

The U.S. can end child poverty by investing more in programs and policies that work. Substantial progress in reducing child poverty has been made over the past 50 years, despite worsening income inequality

As poverty spreads, there are carving broader arcs of desperation throughout the country. A rising number of Americans are struggling to make it from one paycheck or unemployment check to the next (Abramsky, 2012). In the United States, families and individuals are classified as being in poverty if their annual money income before taxes and other deductions falls below the official poverty thresholds (Betson, 1977). According to the United States Census Bureau, poverty is based on the number of people in a family, and who share an income less than three times the cost of food for that household. The recent United State recession has pushed the number of poor young children to their highest levels of poverty since 1994. Poverty is more pervasive

Moffitt R. (2015). The Deserving Poor, the Family, and the U.S. Welfare System. Population Assistance of America

From 1996 to 2011, poverty was on the rise in U.S households with children. A means-tested transfer program will be utilized to discuss the findings. The World Bank defined “Extreme poverty” as global poverty: a person which only earns about $2.00 dollars per day. By using 1996 to 2008 information that was provided by Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), it was estimated by mid-2011, on any given month, about 1.65 million households were living in conditions that were considered to be extreme poverty with 3.55 million being children and this is based on the cash income. In households where children lived with non-elderly parents, accounted for 4.3 percent. Since 1996 extreme poverty has sharply risen, because of the 1996 welfare

was seen as a program that countered poverty and a program that encouraged individuals to

From this, it is estimated that a nearly 30 million Mexican civilians receive benefits from the CCT program. This also includes food subsidies by other CCT programs in the region. The conditions for this program require that eligible families must be living below the worldwide poverty line and have children under the age of 23 attending school. The recipients are mostly mothers and tend to receive their grants bimonthly. There is also the involvement that the students receive educational grants from primary school through high-school. Specific to the Oportunidades program, cash grants increase with age. The data analysis for providing Mexico’s CCT program also include that girls receive higher amounts of cash grants. Other applicable conditions require attendance at preventative health care facilities in order to receive food subsidies and nutritional baby foods as extensions of the Oportunidades grant. With the successful Mexican experience, other Latin American countries began to develop their own CCT programmes. Columbia followed the Progresa model very closely; whose Families in Action program portions Progresa’s goals of human capital expansion and poverty alleviation. The creation of this program has been shown to increase families’ basic consumption by more than 15%. Other program achievements include reducing child malnutrition and child

What government assistance program has been used by people living in poverty for over sixty years and underwent a major reform in 1996? The program, currently refer to as, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). This program costs U.S. taxpayers approximately one trillion a year. The changes created during 1996 required TANF cash recipients to attend a work preparation program and imposed the sixty month lifetime limit. The changes forced some recipients off of TANF. Many reported that their inability to meet employment requirements and or failure to comply with program guidelines forced them away. According to Greenberg, Ashworth, Cebulla, & Walker (2004) Work First priority is to place customers into work

There’s connotation of inability or incapability linked to direct cash transfers to the poor in a social space similar to our own system. There is that association because it is seen as a charity to those who can’t work. In a world where labor is exchanged for goods and services, those who can’t provide that labor are given monetary compensation. But when this money is handed out, it’s almost with the assumption that an individual is receiving this money

"Economists, who tend to be general egalitarians, usually argue for giving cash instead of specific goods and services, because a cash transfer allowsrecipients more options and thus does more (per dollar) to increase therecipient's wellbeing. The idea is that people can choose the goods andservices that best fit their needs if they are given unrestricted income.Economists also prefer cash transfers because such programs are much lesscostly to administer." (Amacher, R., & Pate, J., 2013)

and Duflo found no effect on the welfare of boys. However as the pension was an income transfer of significant proportions it is not unexpected that the health of children would increase, especially in previously highly financially constrained family’s. Nevertheless this is an important proponent in the argument for the impact that cash transfers can have on children 's health in developing nations. The most resounding finding of Duflo’s paper however was that the cash transfer had no improving effects on child health if it was received by a man, rejecting the unitary model of the household and proposing questions for the future of income transfers. These findings are refuted by findings in the develop world, Mayer found that cash transfers in the US had no effect on child welfare. Duflo highlights ‘that the efficiency consequences of transfer programs may be of different order of magnitude depending on how they are administered.’

When we attack poverty on many levels, bringing together aid and education, community and economic development, and bringing empowerment to individuals, women and children, then we can begin to see real change in the communities and society. However, society is strutted in such a way that not all

In the decade prior to the onset of the crisis a large number among the new social protection programmes had emerged in the South with a specific focus on children. Children are the largest group within the global poor, and by investing in children’s development, social transfers contribute to providing a permanent exit from

In the short run, governments could use income distribution schemes to attenuate negative impacts on the poor of policies intended to jump start growth, but transfer schemes cannot be an answer in the long run and can be problematic also in the short run.5 In poor countries such schemes can impose significant burdens on already stretched budgets, and it is theoretically impossible to reduce poverty through redistribution in countries where average income falls below US$ 700 per year. According to a recent OECD study, even in developed countries, redistribution schemes cannot be the only response to rising poverty rates in certain segments of the population. 6

The situation keeps aggravating despite of several poverty alleviation programs that are implemented every year. The main reason for such failure, apart from the implementation issues, would be the measurement and numbers on which these programs are based. Appropriate measurement is central to analyzing and understanding poverty and its alleviation.