Mitigating Myths about Policy Effectiveness: Evaluation of Mexico’s Antipoverty and Human Resource Investment Program

Abstract

What is known about the effectiveness of many policies is dominated by prior beliefs or myths rather than by careful analyses. This article discusses an important exception to this generalization in which, in sharp contrast to most previous and much concurrent and subsequent practice, serious efforts at evaluation were implemented from the start: the Mexican PROGRESA/Oportunidades antipoverty and human resource investment program, initiated in 1997. The article begins by introducing the program and providing relevant background material and then summarizes initial evaluation results in rural areas, where both of the authors were extensively involved in the evaluation, and then turns more briefly to the current evaluation of Oportunidades in urban areas and the longer-run evaluation of PROGRESA/Oportunidades in rural areas. This program has been an important model not only in terms of using conditional cash transfers to induce human resource investments but also in being serious about policy evaluation.