Versión de HTML Básico
Lorena Moreno
86
Analiti a, Revista de análisis estadístico, Vol. 13 (1), 2017
Regardless of the apparent simplicity, the underlying intricate issues are constantly stud-
ied on the hopes of stablishing strategies that can effectively tackle poverty by placing
individuals well-being as the ultimate objective. The theorization that best represents this
aim is Sen’s capability approach, which understands poverty as the lack of expansion of the
peoples’ freedoms seen both as primary ends and principal means not just as the simple
process of accumulation and economic growth. In other words, development is only achieved
when substantive freedoms as health and education satisfy both their constitutive and in-
strumental roles. The author mentions five types of instrumental freedoms, from which two
are more accurately related to the design of policy interventions concerned with nutritional
status, a) social opportunities and b) protective security. The former referring to the need of
societal arrangements to secure healthy living and the later to the importance of providing
safety nets to reduce the probability of extreme vulnerability (Sen, 1999).
Governments of developing countries have acted as catalysers of these instrumental free-
doms for many years, by designing focalised tools, being one of the most widely and recently
used the cash transfers. For the present research, the schemes that require co-responsibilities
from the beneficiaries are of interest, namely the CCTs. The existing literature on these mat-
ter concludes that there are two main purposes for implementing CCTs, equity in the short
run by redistributing resources to the poorer households and efficiency in the long run by
restoring the mismatch between parents’ preferences and social benefits from human capi-
tal investment (i.e. alleviating transactional, imperfect information and opportunity costs)
(De Janvry and Sadoulet, 2006). These two elements are meant to be achieved by the
transfer, though, due to trade-offs they depend on the success of the alignment between
programmes objectives and the good that is conditioned (Das et al., 2005).
The CCTs have the premise that while the supply side is met by services and goods
offered, there is a need to promote demand through conditions to attain social investment.
Therefore, it is not enough to incentive the demand through an income effect (increasing
households available budget), but also via a price effect (the behaviours households ought
to change to receive the benefit) (Bourguignon et al., 2002). The usual beneficiaries are
households and the stimulated changes are regular school attendance and periodical health
checks for the children. These co-responsibilities embody the substantive freedoms of this
poverty cycle breakage strategy, education and health/nutrition (Rawlings and Rubio, 2003).
2.2 Children anthropometric status and well-being
Malnutrition is a dangerous phenomenon that has constantly affected vulnerable population
in developing countries, since it’s evident short-term physical consequences have been proved
to perpetuate into the long-run on such deep levels that reversibility is hard to accomplish.
Because of this, childhood is considered to be the stage where intervention can be most
rewarding (Behrman and Hoddinott, 2005). Therefore, it is primordial to review both the
determinants and the consequences of malnutrition to understand how programmes as CCTs
4