Effectiveness of Targeting in Social Protection Programs Aimed to Children

One of the main challenges for the post-2015 agenda is to reach universal primary education for all children. The last decade experienced a boom of social protection programs aimed at increasing school enrollment, mostly in the form of Conditional Cash Transfers. These programs are mostly targeted to poor families and have proved to increase enrollment and attendance. However, not all vulnerable children are benefiting from these programs.

As more children are to be reached, there is a higher risk to incur in inclusion errors. This paper discusses the main challenges of targeting this type of programs and draws some lessons for improving targeting effectiveness. It also highlights the importance of moving from enrollment and attendance to learning and attainment as we move forward towards reaching high education quality for all children.