Abstract
Social cash transfers as a strategy for poverty reduction acquired prominence in Latin America but spread later to the rest of the developing world because earlier poverty reduction strategies did not make many gains. Most studies on cash transfer schemes seem tilted towards evaluating their impacts while neglecting the arguments surrounding their design and operations. As such, this paper reviews some of the debates that engulf social cash transfers as a form of social assistance. The review showed that debates about social cash transfers generally centre on targeting, affordability, conditionalities, poverty reduction ability, utilisation of cash, market effect, cash versus food stamp, and dependency. It is concluded that the debates are crucial as they lay the pedestal upon which policy makers take the decision as to whether to set up, change or end an existing cash transfer programme. Keywords : Social, Cash, Transfer, Debate, Poverty, Conditional
Highlights
Poverty is a worldwide challenge to the development of various countries
The review showed that the dominant arguments that engulf social cash transfer (SCT) programmes globally commonly mass around targeting of beneficiaries, affordability, placing conditions or not, poverty reduction capacity, market distortion effect or growth, utilisation of cash, cash versus food aid and beneficiary dependency on the programme
These debates indicate that there are two sides to cash transfer programmes, with one side portraying it as a panacea to development, while the other side describes it as a limitation to progress
Summary
Poverty is a worldwide challenge to the development of various countries. This is because it exists in both developed and developing countries but is endemic in the developing world (Blank, 2008; Alkire, Chatterjee, Conconi, Seth & Vaz, 2014; United Nations [UN], 2015). Apart from Sub-Saharan Africa, practically all the regions of the world attained their poverty reduction targets under the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) one This gives the hint that at the global stage, there is the attainment of MDG one, which centred on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. The universality of SCT as a form of social protection was because of the need to address poverty and vulnerability within the short, medium and long-term (Farrington, Harvey, Holmes & Slater, 2007). This is because of the realisation that market oriented economic growth alone was less likely to engineer poverty reduction in most countries (Standing, 2008; Fiszbein et al, 2009). The rest of the review addresses some of the contestations in SCTs eventually narrowing in on the conclusions and policy implications
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