Procedimientos almacenados ABM

The design of any effective cash transfer programme requires attentive consideration of rules for exit and entry. The fundamental question that cash transfer programmes attempt to solve at design stage is “whether there should be a sunset clause or time limit after which the payments decrease or disappear” (Clunies-Ross & Huq 2014:63). This strategic question has received considerable attention in CT programmes across regions – Latin America, and Sub Saharan Africa regions. A number of reasons explain the domination of the notion of graduation in cash transfer programmes.

According to Sabates-Wheeler and Devereux (2011:16) graduation is “critical for programming and budgetary purposes because [it] defines eligibility for and exit from many social protection programmes ….” Fiszbein and Schady (2009:24) infer that “entry and exit rules are necessary to avoid confusion among prospective beneficiaries and to minimise the potential for manipulation and abuse. Entry and exit rules are also important because they can have unintended incentive effects, particularly related to labour force participation.” Graduation is a central feature in the design of CT programmes

157 also because cash transfers contribute to reducing the vulnerability of poor people to the extent that they move off dependency and manage moderate shocks and risks on their own or from other social support programmes.

The concept of graduation is defined in several ways. According to Grosh (2014) the concept can refer to:

1. Actions to raise or stabilise households’ autonomous income – [for example] graduating from the present degree of poverty,

2. Exiting a program due to some benchmark met – aging out, or no longer meeting needs assessment, and

3. Euphemism or fig-leaf for exiting a program with no real prospect of betterment.

Sabates-Wheeler and Devereux (2011:10) distinguish between “threshold graduation” and “sustainable graduation.” Devereux (as cited in Sabates-Wheeler and Devereux 2011:10) states that: “[t]hreshold/benchmark graduation describes a process whereby recipients of support move from a position of depending on external assistance to a condition where they theoretically no longer need this support, and can therefore exit the programme.” The threshold is a programme-defined benchmark and is primarily an administrative issue. Sabates-Wheeler and Devereux (2011:10) define sustainable graduation as “the ability of the household to remain above the benchmark in the medium- to long-term via a transformed [and more resilient] livelihood.” Sustainable graduation provides a firm platform for security against future destitution and is a pathway towards economic independence. A point is made that sustainable graduation requires that threshold graduation be met first for example relieving extreme poverty. Much of the focus in social cash transfers is on threshold graduation. Several key factors that enable or constrain a household’s movement along a pathway to sustainable graduation are outlined in the CT literature and include: state of markets, baseline resource conditions and functionality and efficiency existing assets, size of transfer and coverage, household level incentives and the social, political and environmental contexts. These factors may be

158 programme-specific, beneficiary-specific, community-specific or market-specific (ibid., 11).

There is general consensus amongst authors in the CT literature on the point that some categories of CT beneficiaries should not be expected to quickly graduate from programmes and in some cases graduation should not be expected to occur at all. In the latter case, provision of cash transfers will not have a time-limit or termination plans. Garcia and Moore (2012:129) point to the demographic peculiarity in Sub Saharan Africa where generation-gap households composed of older persons and many orphaned children are increasingly common. Programme graduation is not feasible with such high dependency ratio households in the short or even medium term. Sabates-Wheeler and Devereux (2011:17) make a similar point: “Not all households can be expected to ‘graduate’ from social protection programmes. Some vulnerable and poor people, such as the elderly poor or people living with severe disabilities, are likely to require social assistance over a long, if not life-long, period.”

Graduation and exit rules and practices differ across regions and cash transfer programmes – conditional or unconditional. Johannsen, Tejerina and Glassman (2010:159) provide useful insights into the exit rules and practices of CCT programmes in Latin America. The authors assert that “experience with truly results-oriented exit strategies is scarce.” Results-oriented exit strategies are based on the notion that after desired effects have been achieved, beneficiaries exit the programme. For example, CCT graduation based on the education cycle in terms of completing a certain secondary school grade. Chile’s Solidario is generally considered an example of a programme with a results-based graduation model even though it uses time limit on beneficiaries. The Solidario is a bridge programme that adopts a phased programme design involving a 2-year intervention and a subsequent 3-year exit phase “with frozen payment amounts designed to encourage the graduation to other programmes.” The programme provides a coordinated social safety net platform that links households to a variety of social programmes, services and the wider economy. The key expectation in the

159 programme design is that after 2 years beneficiaries will have achieved threshold graduation and move towards the sustainable graduation pathway.

The most common exit strategies in many CCT programmes in Latin America are based on budgetary limits and government cycles. These two factors lead to exit rules related to time limits (maximum time period to be spent in the programme) or to natural age-related graduation when the age cap for eligibility to receive benefits is reached as is the case in Colombia’s programmes (ibid.).

In Sub Saharan Africa, Ethiopia’s PSNP and Rwanda’s Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP) provide useful examples of the practice of graduation in CT programmes. The concept of graduation is an integral part of the PSNP. The PSNP’s Graduation Guidance Note (FSCB) as cited in Sabates-Wheeler and Devereux (2011:8) describes graduation from PSNP as follows: “A household has graduated when, in the absence of receiving PSNP transfers, it can meet its food needs for all 12 months and is able to withstand modest shocks.” Ethiopia’s Food Security Programme (FSP) is made up of four components, and three components contribute directly to the graduation model. The three are the PSNP – designed to protect existing assets and ensure a minimum level of food consumption, the Household Asset Building Programme (HABP) – designed to increase household incomes generated from agricultural activities and to build up assets through extension and credit services, and the Complementary Community Investments (CCI). Graduation in the FSP is a phased approach arising from the combined effect of the components and other development interventions in the programme areas.

Coming first is the graduation from PSNP as described earlier. Households then receive a year of support through the HABP enabling them to accumulate assets. The graduation becomes sustainable when households become resilient enough to support themselves at which point they fully exit the FSP (ibid., 9).

In the case of Rwanda’s VUP households are categorised into 5-7 wealth groups. Eligible households are those listed in the bottom two wealth categories. Retargeting is carried out biannually and households that no

160 longer qualify to be in the bottom 2 wealth categories exit the programme, and are subsequently replaced by others (Sabates-Wheeler & Devereux 2011:9;

and Garcia & Moore 2012:129).

A key challenge identified in the CT literature on graduation is that some programmes across regions often pushed beneficiaries from programmes before they were able to survive without cash transfers. Garcia and Moore (2012:129) cite the example of PSNP which initially graduated some households after they accumulated assets despite the assets being acquired on credit in some cases. Such households had no option but to sell the assets in order to liquidate their debts thus defeating the objectives of the programme. Many of such ‘graduates’ fell back below the graduation threshold within a short period of time suggesting that graduation was done prematurely. Ethiopia moved to address the problem by promoting programme linkages through the FSP described earlier. Johannsen, Tejerina and Glassman (2010:159) make the point that “… CCT programmes in Latin America are not well prepared to release their beneficiaries” primarily because exit strategies based on results are limited in the region.

Graduation and exit rules in CT programmes represent an important social dimension of CT programmes with important social implications.

Fundamentally, beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries need to be informed unambiguously about the entry and exit rules of CT programmes. This is necessary to build trust between programme officials and communities and to avoid confusion through information asymmetries. Results-oriented exit rules and graduated benefits provide assurance to beneficiaries that they will not be worse off or fall from “cliffs” after payments are stopped. As is emphasised in the CT literature, graduation arises from the combined effect of many programmes and development interventions, and not just the sole success of CT programmes. In this regard, graduation and exit rules that are predicated on a programme’s ability to link households to other services are likely to serve as a basis to build or strengthen a household or community’s linking social capital – that is, the capacity to leverage resources, ideas and information from other programmes beyond exited programmes. Accessing

161 these additional resources in order to strengthen resilience enables households to scale up micro-level social capital – bonding and bridging – as they come into contact with new programmes, institutions, new markets and higher level economic opportunities and activities.