Little People, Big Words: ‘Generationating’ Conditional Cash Transfers in Urban Ecuador

Abstract

Employing a generational approach, this chapter decentres adults' voices in research on conditional cash transfer programmes creating the conceptual space for bringing in children's experiences and perspectives. The Ecuadorian programme Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH) targets households with children, providing income support and incentivising human capital investments aiming at breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Chronological age constitutes a key measure in the architecture of the BDH which renders childhood a site of investment and adulthood a time for productive employment. Being a BDH recipient affects children's relational position in the household, vis-à-vis other children, and the state. Teenage motherhood is analysed as friction between the age-normativity shaping the BDH design and the lived realities of poor families.