Social Cash Transfers

Abstract

This chapter draws together the findings from the earlier chapters, depicting achievements, limitations, and backgrounds of the global rise of social cash transfers. Cash transfers have turned millions of the poor into rights-holders, indicating an entitlement revolution. Cash transfers bring material betterment, but also a social recognition of the poor as agents of their own lives and as contributors to economic development. The rise of cash transfers reflects far-reaching changes in domestic and global politics, namely a ‘socialization’ of politics, growing political commitments to the social, and powerful new frames. Still, the politics of ‘Leaving no one behind’ remain thin; categorically fragmented and particularistic rather than universalistic cash transfer regimes prevail, and political commitments are uneven. Generally, cash transfers are Janus-faced, reflecting social citizenship as well as social control. Based on the findings, the onion skin model of political commitments and frames developed in Chapter 2 is refined.