Latin America and the Caribbean

This article analyses one of the causes of migration in rural Mexico through the lens of US foreign assistance policy. US aid to Mexico – the largest migrant-sending country to the USA by far – does not sufficiently take into account the conditions of rural under-development and joblessness that encourage unauthorised migration to the USA. Instead US foreign assistance has been dominated by aid to Mexico's security agencies. This article analyses how the link between rural underdevelopment and migration-pressures has not been successfully addressed by either the Mexican or US governments. The article also analyses an innovative development project that explicitly seeks to support campesinos with the goal of reducing unauthorised migration pressures in a traditional migrant-sending rural region of Mexico.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2013.772025

Based on data from the Latinobarómetro, this study analyses data on happiness to establish the probability that an individual is happy. The focus is put on self-reported health status as a key aspect in increasing levels of happiness. The probability of being happy is econometrically estimated by probit models for each country. Results show that the main relationship is between happiness and health status. Whether this is a causal effect or only a correlation, is not clear. This issue is explored by using propensity score matching methods. These show that good health status increases the probability of being satisfied with life by between 13 and 17 percentage points. In line with the literature, we find that the relationship between age and happiness is U-shaped, with happiness at its lowest point at the age of 48.2.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2013.772024

Latin American firms are moving from narrow philanthropy to broader engagement with development priorities. We examine this shift with data from Alianzas, a development programme promoting private contributions to health and education in Guatemala. We use Solomon's (2010) dimensions of proliferation, professionalisation, and partnering to compare firms' pre-Alianzas efforts with programme activities. Both firms with established and new philanthropic programmes engaged with Alianzas (proliferation). Most participants were willing to steer efforts towards public priorities (professionalisation) and collaborate with government (partnering). Given chronic underfunding of health and education priorities in Guatemala, we suggest that private contributions to public programmes be institutionalised.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2012.713324

Previous research has revealed that social policy design is relevant for addressing social problems, particularly for reducing poverty. However, evidence on poverty reduction exposes a sluggish trend towards achieving its main goals. This paper first reports on research examining to what extent social policy design has addressed social problems, poverty in particular. Second, this paper examines whether poverty lines have linked social policy design and social problems. Finally, this paper reveals that social policy design does not address poverty reduction and that poverty lines have not linked policy design and poverty reduction.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.696091

The use of impact assessment can be characterised on a scale with ‘proving impact’ on one side and ‘improving practices’ on the other. Even though this is not an either/or scale, the two often do not combine automatically. In this article an adjusted Sustainable Livelihood Framework for impact assessment is developed that does justice to both. The use of this framework has implications in terms of a multi-method research approach, an extensive variety of data collection, and an in-depth data analysis. This is illustrated by applying the framework to a socio-economic impact study conducted for the DE Foundation coffee support project.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.696586

In this article, we challenge the notion that complex and resilient problems – such as global warming and poverty – will have to be resolved by governments or responsible corporations. Instead, we argue for the potency of social initiatives promoted by communities of engaged people. A variety of experiences from around the world, and especially from Brazilians with their “Why not?” temperament, suggest characteristics of the origin, development, and diffusion of these initiatives. We conclude that social initiatives, by addressing local problems of a global nature, using networks connected across communities, may be the greatest hope for this troubled world.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.696585

Drawing on empirical data from a community-based study with children and adults in rural Peru, the paper analyses the everyday experiences of a conditional cash transfer programme, called ‘Juntos’. The findings show that social protection programmes like Juntos address certain child vulnerabilities by making eligibility for their cash transfers conditional on behaviour-related to child protection-related such as health check-ups and school attendance.

Development in Practice prides itself in being one of the most international of development journals, based on both authorship and readership. To reinforce our commitment to this international participation we are pleased to announce that our editorial team will now be strengthened by a group of regionally based contributing editors, who will provide a perspective on the key development issues, authors, and publications from those regions.

Access to piped water is highly unequal in Mexico, and indigenous municipalities are particularly disadvantaged. The present article identifies the different factors that contribute to the unequal access to piped water across Mexican municipalities for the period 2000–2005, using regression analyses. The findings show that indigenous populations experience lower piped water coverage than non-indigenous populations, even when one accounts for population density (the main explanation that the government provides for indigenous populations' lack of progress) and other relevant factors.

The world is standing at a major point in its history as I write, with European politicians still deliberating as to how a deepening of the international economic crisis will be averted or at least mitigated. The longer term implications for developing and emerging economies cannot yet be known. At one level we may see a major change in the emphasis of development aid, as well as priorities within developing countries as the demand-led consumer boom falters, but new opportunities arise in those countries still maintaining their economic growth.