The Young Lives team in Peru hosted a breakfast meeting on 29 January 2013 to discuss its research on the conditional cash transfer programme, Juntos. More than 70 people attended from ministries, government departments and the private sector, as well as other researchers and civil society organisations.
Four papers were presented by GRADE researchers, followed by comments and reflections from the Executive Director of Juntos, Milagros Alvarado. A lively discussion with the audience ensued, focusing on the findings and their implications for policy.
?This type of research inspires us to carry on with our work?, said Alvarado, encouraging the GRADE researchers to carry on their work to help identify aspects of the programme which could be improved.
In their work, Escobal and Benites found that the money transfer made by Juntos to participating households (200 soles every 2 months), increased the amount that many families could invest in extra livelihood activities (such as small animal husbandry or horticulture) by almost 50 per cent. Their work also shows some unintended consequences of the programme, such as children doing less paid work outside the home but an increased amount of chores at home to compensate for the extra work their mothers are doing. This reduces the amount of time they have available for play, and means that children have less positive impressions of the programme than their mothers.
Alvarado noted how useful these findings would be for the Juntos programme which aims to improve children?s well-being, through their mothers who are the recipients of the cash payments.
The two papers by Sánchez and Jaramillo concluded that Juntos is contributing to reducing severe malnutrition among beneficiary children below the age of 5, but that this reduction (of both moderate and severe malnutrition) was most prevalent among children whose mothers were more educated.
Alvarado was pleased to announce that Juntos, with funding from the InterAmerican Development Bank, was in the process of creating a baseline (starting in 2014) to make data available, for Peru and neighbouring countries in order to develop medium-term indicators to measure and evaluate the impact of the programme on beneficiary families.
Juntos is one of the programmes which has been the focus of GRADE?s research interest. Questions are asked as part of the regular Niños del Milenio household survey, in order to gather information and the opinions of participating families and children.
The 4 papers presented were:
Impacto del programa Juntos sobre nutrición temprana, by Miguel Jaramillo and Alan Sánchez (GRADE research paper 61), 2012
Impacto de Juntos sobre salud temprana, also by Miguel Jaramillo and Alan Sánchez (in press)
Transferencias y Condiciones: Efectos no previstos del Programa JUNTOS, by Javier Escobal and Sara Benites, Boletín 5 de Políticas Públicas del Estudio Niños del Milenio, 2012
Algunos impactos del programa JUNTOS en el bienestar de los niños: Evidencia basada en el estudio Niños del Milenio, also by Javier Escobal and Sara Benites, Boletín 7 de Políticas Públicas del Estudio Niños del Milenio, 2012.
