Revisiting conditional cash transfers: General overview and its implementation in turkey

Abstract

We first provide a general overview of conditional cash transfers and then review in detail the available information on conditional cash transfers for education and conditional health benefits in Turkey. The program was primarily initiated to alleviate the effects of the Turkish 2000–2001 banking crisis on the poor. In addition, it was aimed at increasing the enrolment rate and duration of schooling for children living in a low-income family as well as ensuring that women during and after pregnancy, and children after birth benefit from basic healthcare and nutrition services. In fact, according to our study, Turkey has overall made significant progress in both health outcomes and access to education at all levels, and this observed improvement in education and health could be attributed to the implementation of conditional cash transfers. However, although the descriptive statistics suggest that there has been a gradual increase in the number of beneficiaries for both conditional cash transfers for education and conditional health benefits over a 16-year period (2003–2018), the total amount of resources allocated to conditional cash transfers in other social protection programs is still limited.