Countries have been adopting or considering adopting conditional cash transfer (CCt) programs at a prodigious rate. In some
countries, including Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico, CCts have become the largest social assistance program, covering millions of households. They have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality, especially in the very unequal countries in Latin America; of helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another; of promoting child health, nutrition, and schooling; and of helping countries meet the Millennium development goals. Nancy Birdsall, of the Center for Global Development, calls CCts “as close as you can come to a magic bullet in development” (Dugger 2004). Conversely, an article in the Institute of Development Studies Bulletin refers to CCts as “superfluous, pernicious, atrocious and abominable” (Freeland 2007, p. 75), arguing that they represent an impractical way to improve the use of social services (particularly in low-income countries) and are immoral because they may deprive the neediest people of the assistance they deserve.