Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) are a new strategy for reducing poverty that aims to break the cycle of poverty that carries across generations by promoting human capital formation with a direct transfer of cash and services. In the past decades, CCTs have been introduced as an integral component of social protection in many countries in Latin America. Program designs vary significantly across countries and the factors that explain these differences in terms of coverage, beneficiary selection methods, conditionality, and support for beneficiaries’ insertion into the labor market remain to be explored. Comparing the cases of Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, I demonstrate that democracy, partisanship, market openness, and economic growth rates are crucial determinants of CCT variation.

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