Red de Protección Social (RPS)
Red de Protección Social (RPS, "Social Protection Network") was a Nicaraguan government conditional cash transfer program that ran from 2000 to 2006, paying poor rural mothers bimonthly cash grants conditioned on children's school attendance, growth monitoring, vaccinations, and health check-ups. It was modeled on Mexico's PROGRESA and funded primarily by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration alongside the Government of Nicaragua, with technical/evaluation support from IFPRI. RPS-I (2000-2002) covered about 10,000 households in six rural municipalities in Madriz and Matagalpa; RPS-II (2003-2006) expanded to roughly 30,000 households before the incoming Ortega administration discontinued the program in 2007, replacing it with different food-production initiatives (Hambre Cero, Usura Cero). It is now permanently discontinued and does not accept new participants.
Conditional Cash Transfer, Discontinued, Rural Nicaragua, Latin America, IFPRI-evaluated, PROGRESA model, Historical CCT
Headquarters
- Organization Name
- Ministry of the Family, Government of Nicaragua (formerly executed via Fondo de Inversión Social de Emergencia - FISE)
- City
- Managua
- Country
- Nicaragua
Contact
- Social media links
Status & Funding
- Organization status
- Active
- Program status
- Inactive
- Application status
- Timed
- Number of recipients
- 30,000
- Funding type
- Government, Nonprofit
Benefits
- Currency Type
- Fiat
- Total Amount
- 1,008
- Avg. Per Month
- 28
- Payment frequency
- Variable
- How long the program lasts
- 36 months
- Distribution Type
- Cash handed out in person at community payment sites (bimonthly), with an annual in-kind school-supplies transfer (Mochila Escolar)
- Benefit details
Households received a bimonthly Food Security Grant (Bono de Seguridad Alimentaria, ~US$18-19/month in RPS-I, reduced and later graduated down to US$126-168/year in RPS-II) and a bimonthly Education Grant (~US$112/household/year in RPS-I, reduced to US$90/year in RPS-II) if they had eligible children, plus an annual School Backpack (Mochila Escolar, US$21-25 per eligible child). A separate Occupational Training Grant paid youth ages 14-25 about US$15/month plus a one-time US$200 grant to start a small business after completing vocational courses. Supply-side transfers were also paid directly to participating health providers, schools, and teacher/parent associations. Households could remain enrolled for a maximum of three years, after which transfers phased out (supply-side support could continue up to two more years).
Eligibility
Overview
- Eligibility details
Eligible households were extremely poor rural families identified first through geographic targeting of poor municipalities/comarcas and then through a proxy-means test of household per-capita expenditure. To receive the Education Grant, households needed at least one child aged 7-13 who had not completed fourth grade; to receive the Food Security/health grant, households needed children under 5 (or under 9 for vaccination requirements) or women of reproductive age. Conditionalities included 85%+ school attendance, up-to-date vaccination and growth-monitoring visits, and mothers'/adolescents' attendance at bimonthly health and nutrition education talks. Grants were paid to the mother/female head of household as the titular beneficiary.
Demographics
- Minimum age
- 0
- Maximum age
- 25
- Education level
- Preschool, Elementary
- Language
- Spanish
Family
- Family Status
- Parent
- Number of dependents (minimum)
- 1
Citizenship
- Citizenship / immigration status
- Citizen
Geography
- Countries covered
- Nicaragua
- Residency of Target Geography
- Yes
Participation
- Research / data sharing
- Required
- Research / participation requirements
RPS was designed from the outset with an experimental evaluation design: 21 communities were randomly assigned to treatment or control (with control communities delayed entry to RPS-II), enabling a rigorous impact evaluation. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), an independent research organization, conducted the official evaluation via household panel surveys in 2000, 2001, and 2002, publishing key findings in IFPRI Research Report 141 (Maluccio and Flores, 2005). RPS became one of the most heavily studied CCT programs in the literature, with numerous follow-up studies (e.g., 10-year follow-up studies by Barham, Macours, and Maluccio) examining long-term effects on schooling, cognitive development, and labor outcomes, funded by IDB, the World Bank, and academic institutions.
Application Process
- How to apply
There was no open, ongoing application process. Eligible households were identified and enrolled by program staff through geographic targeting of poor rural municipalities/comarcas, followed (in some areas) by a census and proxy-means-test survey to further target individual households. Selected households were invited to community assemblies where the titular female beneficiary signed on to receive benefits and accept the program's co-responsibilities. The program is closed and not accepting new applicants.
- Selection process
Communities were first selected via geographic targeting based on poverty maps and municipal-level poverty indicators, prioritizing the poorest census areas. Within targeted areas, most or all households were initially eligible; in a second stage, a proxy-means test (based on a baseline household survey estimating per-capita expenditure) was used to further include or exclude individual households, and households owning a vehicle or 14.1+ hectares of land were excluded. A Single Register of Beneficiaries (Registro Único de Beneficiarios) was used to track enrolled households, though it was only implemented nationwide in a limited number of municipalities.
