Conditional Cash Transfers in OECD Countries: a Realist Synthesis
Francesco Mazzeo Rinaldi
Liliana Leone- 1University of Catania, Italy
- 2CEVAS, Italy
Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) schemes have been adopted mostly in low-income countries as a tool to break the vicious cycle of poverty transmission. Although their use is controversial, behavioral conditionalities have also been widely used in welfare-to-work strategies, minimum income scheme, and labor market "activation" policies in OECD countries.
The paper presents the results of a Realist Review to synthesize the evidence of CCTs related to work conditionality, delivered in OECD countries. The evaluation literature of 23 selected CCTs programs was analyzed by reconstructing Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations.
The main findings show that CCTs can be an effective counterbalance to work disincentives introduced by welfare measures. The unintended negative impacts, the role of sanctioning, and the causal pathways that may affect the most disadvantaged people and their children are discussed.
Keywords: Realist synthesis, conditionality, activation, Poverty, minimum income Formatted: Font: 11, 5 pt Font: 11, 5 pt
Received: 08 Apr 2023;
Accepted: 18 Aug 2023.
Copyright: © 2023 Mazzeo Rinaldi and Leone. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mx. Francesco Mazzeo Rinaldi, University of Catania, Catania, Italy