Mexico’s Prospera social inclusion program, launched in 1997 as Progresa, gave conditional cash transfers to poor families who in exchange had to meet certain health and educational requirements for their children. In 2019, the government under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obredor ended the program. Five years later, how have economic and educational outcomes for the country’s most vulnerable been impacted by the program’s closure? The Georgetown Americas Institute (GAI) was pleased to host a virtual panel on the impact of Mexico’s Prospera program featuring Susan Wendy Parker of the University of Maryland; John Scott of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching; Tulane University’s Nora Lustig, also a GAI resident fellow; and Alejandro Werner, GAI founding director.
This event was held in Spanish with simultaneous translation to English.
Featuring
Susan W. Parker is professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park; associate director of the Maryland Population Research Center; affiliated professor at the Poverty Action Labo (JPAL); and non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. She was previously a professor of economics at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City and a member (Level 3) of the Mexican National System of Researchers (SNI). As an empirical economist and demographer, she studies policies which promote development and reduce poverty in Latin America, particularly the evaluation of programs and public policies in Mexico. Among other outlets, her research has been published in: American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Coyuntura Demográfica, Demography, Economic Journal, el Trimeste Economico, Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos, International Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Human Resources, and the Journal of Political Economy. Her current research projects include studying the effects of the elimination of a conditional cash transfer program and the long-term effects of a mandatory preschool reform, both in Mexico.
John Scott is a professor-researcher in the economics division of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE). His areas of specialization focus on fiscal incidence and public spending, measurement of poverty and inequality, evaluation of health programs, social protection, labor policy, basic income, rural and agricultural development and energy subsidies, as well as issues related to human development. He studied philosophy at New York University and completed postgraduate studies in economics from the University of Oxford.
Nora Lustig is a resident fellow with the Georgetown Americas Institute and Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics at Tulane University, where she also founded and directs the Commitment to Equity Institute (CEQ). Additionally, she is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development, and the Inter-American Dialogue. Lustig’s research focuses on economic development, inequality, and social policies, particularly in Latin America. She is the editor of Commitment to Equity Handbook: Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty (2018), a guide to assessing the impact of taxation and social spending on inequality and poverty in developing countries. Lustig is a founding member and president emeritus of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) and was a co-director of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000, Attacking Poverty. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Inequality and is a member of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality’s Executive Council. Lustig served on the Atkinson Commission on Poverty, the High-Level Group on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress, and the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance. She received her doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Alejandro Werner is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute. He recently completed almost nine years as director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that appointment, he was undersecretary of finance and public credit in Mexico’s Finance Ministry and held several positions in that ministry and the Central Bank. He also taught at leading universities in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in economics from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).