Breaking the Cycle of Poverty- Breaking the Conflict Trap

In the New York Times article, To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor, I was especially struck by the line, "The elegant idea behind conditional cash transfers is to combat poverty today while breaking the cycle of poverty for tomorrow." I have done a lot of reading by international development scholar Paul Collier during my undergraduate and graduate studies, and he refers to a similar "cycle of poverty" when describing the relationship between civil war and development. Collier describes a "conflict trap", which is essentially a cycle in which if development fails somewhere, the economy takes a big hit, which puts that country at risk for having longer and more civil wars. The connection that I found between these two concepts is that both can be seen as slow processes. That is, both conditional cash transfers and aid for post conflict reconstruction are more useful when looking to impact future generations as opposed to remedying the current state.

As noted in the NY Times article, the conditional cash transfers have a criteria in which the families receiving the aid have to fulfill a certain set of requirements. It is clear that there are a variety of levels of poverty- between extreme poverty and simply lower class/poor. Ideally, these cash transfers should be able to lift people out from all levels of poverty. However, I am interested in knowing more about whether there is a point on the poverty spectrum in which conditional cash transfers would be more effective than other levels of poverty. In some cases of extreme poverty, it might be unrealistic to expect that the receivers can meet all of the requirements immediately. Instead, direct aid might be more effective until they are able to lift themselves up to a level in which they can be more effective with their payments.

One idea that differentiates Collier from other international theorists is that he puts an emphasis on is helping countries that are not simply poor, but that are in a situation in which the economy is not growing. In other words, if a country does not experienced sustained growth, aid should be put towards development opportunities there. The strategy behind conditional cash transfers is to protect poor households by making the receivers accountable for their actions. Based on Collier’s argument to focus on the poorest of the poor, is it too early to use conditional cash transfers for the people in these nations? Should reconstruction and infrastructure development come first when attempting to help countries suffering from the after effects of civil war? Perhaps the two should happen at the same time in an effort to promote sustainable development for rebuilding post-conflict societies.

It is clear that the efficacy of both Collier’s ideas and conditional cash transfers will need to be evaluated over a long period of time. In any case, helping the lowest level of poverty will be a slow job for generations, one that will require lifting people out of extreme poverty while simultaneously equipping them with the necessary means towards being self-sustainable. I would like to pose the question of what level of poverty would benefit most from conditional cash transfers? Is there a point in which direct aid for reconstruction is more crucial than equipping society with the necessary skills for success?