Giving People Money is Popular, Political Reaction to Conditional Cash Transfers

Conditional Cash Transfer, which give money to poor families in Latin American if their children go to school and the mother attends health seminars, are popular with the development community as many studies have shown their effectiveness at increasing school enrollment and nuitrition. But, they are also popular with politicians, President Lula has increased/maintained
his popularity by expanding the Brazalian program.

Chris Blattman points to a new paper, that showed in Uruguay that giving families a conditional cash transfer raised the popularity of the in power political party by over 20% compared to groups that did not receive them. So are conditional cash transfer just political pandering?

Where democracy is intact, politician still must run these programs effectively as evident by a recent paper (de Janvry, Finan, & Sadoulet) that showed for Bolsa Famalia the Brazilian transfer program, that effectiveness at decreasing drop out rates was closely linked to mayors facing reelections.

So maybe the result is that the programs increase political popularity if they are run well, that's a result I can live with

My Milkshake is Better Than Yours: The Impact of Protein Shakes on Child Nutrition

Things are a little hectic today around the office. First day of classes and we have job a candidate visiting. So I offer you a link and a quick thought:

This Salon article describes a program in Guatemala in the late 1960s and 70s that provided protein shakes to children. Now researchers are looking at how these children faired 30 years later (link to a paper). They utilize the set up of the program, which included a control group that received a shake with no protein. The impacts of the protein shake were found to be over an additional year of school and increase of one standard deviation in test scores. This was found by comparing the protein shake group with the non-protein shake group.

So what can we learn. Early child hood development can be impacted by a simple protein shake. Having control groups makes research easier.