Targeted Human Development Programs: Investing in the Next Generation

Abstract

Intergenerational persistence of poverty is generally linked to the reduced capacity of poor families to foster human capital accumulation of their children and pull them out of poverty. Supply-side interventions, which increase the availability and quality of schooling and health services, might be insufficient to improve this capacity when resource-constrained low-income families cannot bear the direct and indirect private costs of acquiring these services.

During the past decade a new generation of integrated poverty reduction programs, Targeted Human Development Programs (THDPs), have been implemented in Latin America to tackle this problem by addressing the demand side in the use of social services. The Inter-American Development Bank has played and continues to play an active role in establishing these programs and ensuring that they in-corporate sound impact evaluation mechanisms.

This report sets out the rationale for implementing THDPs and outlines instructions for their design and implementation. In addition a list of appropriate country conditions for the implementation of THDPs is presented. The report also describes ways of incorporating impact evaluation mechanisms into project design and presents some of the results based on existing empirical evidence. Finally, a logical framework model for a THDP operation is included in the Annex.