Money isn't all that matters in life: towards the use of multidimensional wellbeing measures in the ex-ante evaluation of social policy.

The use of an innovative type of social assistance, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, has spread across Latin America and the rest of the world. Yet, there is still debate as to whether they are effective in reaching their goal of reducing current and future poverty. Moreover, despite the multidimensional view on wellbeing reflected in the programs, both evaluation and targeting of beneficiaries is generally based on unidimensional measures of wellbeing. In addition, whether alternative designs of CCT programs could achieve improved outcomes has received relatively limited attention. Against this background, I will investigate the possibilities and implications of using a multidimensional framework to target and evaluate CCT programs. I will enrich the possibilities of ex-ante microsimulation analyses, by a) building on the information that ex-post impact evaluations provide on the effects of CCT programs and b) coupling multidimensional measures of wellbeing to microsimulation models.

Keywords:POVERTY AND INEQUALITY, SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Disciplines:Distribution, Welfare economics, Social policy, Program evaluation and social impact assessment