Conditional cash transfers in Brazil, Chile and Mexico: Impacts upon inequality

Abstract

We decompose changes in the Gini coefficient to investigate whether the Conditional Cash Tranfers (CCT) have had an inequality reducing effect in three Latin American countries: Brasil, Mexico and Chile. We conclude that CCT programs helped reducing inequality between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. The share of total income represented by the CCTs is very small, less than 1%. But as their targeting is outstanding, the equalising impact of CCTs was responsible for about 21% of the fall in Brazilian and Mexican inequality figures In Chile the effect was responsible for around 15% of the reduction.