Armando Barrientos
Biographic Data
| ID | 108657 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Armando Barrientos |
| GIVEN NAMES | Armando |
| FAMILY NAME | Barrientos |
| SIGNATURE | BARRIENTOS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0672-7094 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 69 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 445 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 68 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Social protection in Latin America: A critical review
Latin American countries have pioneered innovations in social protection, but their welfare institutions suffer from large and persistent gaps and inequalities in access and provision. This article reviews the substantive body of research addressing this anomaly. A focus on social protection offers a window on what is distinctive about social policy in the region. The social protection matrix in Latin America combines three core institutions: occ…
Prioritarian rates of return to antipoverty transfers
A growing impact evaluation literature on antipoverty transfer programmes in low‐ and middle‐income countries measures changes in utilitarian terms, at their unit value. The paper argues that valuing antipoverty transfers is more appropriately done within a framework of prioritarian social welfare functions, as the very presence of these programmes indicates that polities place a greater value on gains and losses among the disadvantaged. The pape…
Social Assistance Expansion and Political Inclusion in Latin America
Has social assistance expansion contributed to political inclusion in Latin America? The current literature favours a “policy exchange” approach, hypothesising that social assistance is an electoral asset exploited by governing coalitions. The findings from this literature are mixed. The article proposes an alternative approach emphasising political inclusion. In unequal societies where economic cooperation is regulated by institutions generating…
Inequalities in income security in later age in Latin America
This paper examines inequalities in income security in later age. Three dimensions of inequality are considered: (i) inequalities in access to income support across countries and types of schemes; (ii) inequalities in the level of support within countries; and (iii) trends in gender inequality. Scheme stratification reinforces inequalities across socioeconomic groups and gender. More egalitarian, and sustainable, outcomes in later age income secu…
Transnational Actors and Institutionalization of Social Protection in the Global South
Some comparative research on the growth of social assistance in low- and middle-income countries attributes this expansion to the influence of transnational actors, particularly multilaterals. This chapter challenges this widely held view, for which a review of available comparative literature fails to find strong support. Addressing this issue is important because it raises central questions about the focus, scope and methods of comparative rese…
Social assistance and inclusive growth
The expansion of social assistance in low‐ and middle‐income countries raises important issues for inclusive growth. Labour is by far the principal asset of low‐income groups. Changes in the quantity, quality, and allocation of labour associated with social assistance will impact on the productive capacity of low‐income groups and therefore on inclusive growth. The article re‐assesses the findings reported by impact evaluations of social assistan…
Covid-19 and Social Protection in Latin America
The paper considers the role of social protection in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods and in addressing the impact of the economic crisis ahead
Anti-Poverty Transfers and Poverty Reduction
This chapter examines the role that public policy initiatives—specifically anti-poverty transfers—have played in the reduction of poverty and inequality in Brazil. A number of anti-poverty initiatives are considered in turn, and not just the widely known Bolsa Familia conditional cash transfer program. The analysis establishes that such transfers—including conditional cash transfers—have proved surprisingly effective, even helping to tackle long-…
A Decade of Sub-national Pro-poor Growth in Pakistan
From Evidence to Action: The Story of Cash Transfers and Impact Evaluation in Sub-Saharan Africa, Edited by Benjamin Davis, Sudhanshu Handa, Nicola Hypher, Nicola Winder, Paul C. Winters, and Jennifer…
"From Evidence to Action: The Story of Cash Transfers and Impact Evaluation in Sub-Saharan Africa, Edited by Benjamin Davis, Sudhanshu Handa, Nicola Hypher, Nicola Winder, Paul C. Winters, and Jennifer Yablonski." The Journal of Development Studies, 52(12), pp. 1831–1832
Economic and Political Inclusion in Human Development Conditional Income Transfer Programmes in Latin America
Most countries in Latin America have implemented human development conditional income transfer programmes to address intergenerational persistence of poverty. Typically, these programmes provide income transfers to households in poverty, conditional on children attending school and on household members attending health clinics. Evaluations have established that programmes reach their explicit short- and medium-term objectives, especially as regar…
Justice-based social assistance
What are the main objectives of social protection institutions in developing countries? What should be their scope and reach? What is the source of their legitimacy? Finding appropriate answers to these questions is essential to understanding, and shaping, the emergence of welfare institutions in low- and middle-income countries. Most available answers rely on instrumental arguments. Few make reference to normative principles. This article draws …
Antipoverty Transfers and Labour Market Outcomes: Regression Discontinuity Design Findings
The article estimates the impact of Familias en Acción, a human development conditional cash transfer programme, on adult labour market outcomes in urban areas in Colombia. Relying on a regression discontinuity design and a large panel dataset, the article finds significant, largely positive, but heterogeneous programme effects on labour market outcomes. The findings suggest that antipoverty transfers enable a re-allocation of household productiv…
Introduction: Twenty Five Years of the Welfare Modelling Business
Gosta Esping-Andersen's (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism has become one of the most cited works in social policy (over 20,600 Google Scholar citations; 20 October 2014). This path-breaking work, with its identification of three distinct forms of welfare capitalism in high income countries, has become the basis for a whole academic industry described as the Welfare Modelling Business (Abrahamson 1999; Powell and Barrientos 2011). Acco…
Political Factors in the Growth of Social Assistance
This chapter examines the significance of political factors in the rise of social assistance programmes in developing countries in the last decade. It finds this is a two-way process. Politics is crucial to the adoption, design, and implementation of social assistance programmes. They also have a feedback effect on local and national politics. The chapter develops a framework for distinguishing the different dimensions of influence. It applies th…
Is there a Brazilian model of development? Are there lessons for countries in Africa?
Brazil’s recent growth has been intensely pro-poor, and both poverty and inequality have declined significantly in the last decade. It has been suggested that Brazil’s unexpected successes are the outcome of a new model of development. The paper argues that Brazil’s unique combination of economic and social policies is at the root of its inclusive growth, but it is poorly understood. An assessment as to whether this combination constitutes a mode…
Niveles de insatisfacción del usuario externo en el Instituto Nacional de Salud del Niño de Lima, Perú
Objectives. To determine the changes in the levels of dissatisfaction of the external users of the Instituto Nacional de Salud del Niño, in Lima, Peru. Materials and methods. Observational study based on a software to evaluate surveys completed by health care users (Software de Evaluación de Encuestas de Usuarios en Salud - SEEUS). The population consisted of every person accompanying external users to outpatient visits, inpatient visits or emerg…
Is There a Role for Social Pensions in A sia
Rapid population ageing and economic transformation in A sia underline the policy challenges associated with ensuring income security in old age. This article examines the potential role of social pensions in securing old‐age income security in A sia. It assesses the main policy trade‐offs associated with adopting alternative social pension designs, especially around two critical policy points: the comparative advantages of social assistance and …
A Veritable Mountain of Data and Years of Endless Statistical Manipulation’: Methods in the Three Worlds and After
This article assesses the methodological contribution of Esping-Andersen's Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism to welfare regime analysis. It revisits the methods deployed in the Three Worlds and assesses their influence on the practice of welfare regime researchers. It finds that welfare regime researchers have embraced the methods presented in the Three Worlds in a piecemeal fashion. Data reduction techniques, such as cluster and latent variable…
Social transfers and child protection in the South
Most low and middle-income countries have implemented programmes providing transfers to families in poverty, often with a focus on children. The paper examines the potential effects of social transfers in these countries on child protection outcomes: the reduction of violence, exploitation and abuse of children, family separation and improved birth registration. The analysis is based on database including information on 79 impact evaluations in 2…
Social Assistance in Developing Countries
The rapid spread of large-scale and innovative social transfers in the developing world has made a key contribution to the significant reduction in global poverty over the last decade. Explaining how flagship anti-poverty programmes emerged, this book provides the first comprehensive account of the global growth of social assistance transfers in developing countries. Armando Barrientos begins by focusing on the ethical and conceptual foundations …
The Millennium Development Goals and Human Rights: Past, Present and Future
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have generated tremendous discussion in global policy and academic circles. On the one hand, they have been hailed as the most important initiative ever in international development. On the other hand, they have been described as a great betrayal of human rights and universal values that has contributed to a depoliticization of development. With contributions from scholars from the fields of economics, law,…
Social citizenship for the global poor? The worldwide spread of social assistance
The notion of citizenship has universalistic claims, but in practice citizenship goes along with exclusions. Households in poverty are a test case. Social assistance for those in poverty is a rather unlikely source of citizenship because it blends inclusion and exclusion, decommodification and commodification. But we argue that the development of social assistance since the 1950s (in the global North) and since the late 1990s (in the global South…
The Rise of Social Assistance in Brazil
The rise of social assistance in Brazil has been remarkable. The 1988 Constitution signalled a renewed 'social contract' leading to citizenship-based social assistance providing guaranteed income to older and disabled people in poverty. Municipal activism in the 1990s extended the provision of direct transfers to all households in poverty through Bolsa Escola and other programmes later consolidated into Bolsa Família. This article studies the ori…
Delivering Effective Social Assistance: Does Politics Matter?
Welfare regimes and the welfare mix
We present a different approach to appraising welfare regimes, stressing different dimensions, variables and techniques to those used by Esping‐Andersen in his path‐breaking work entitledThe Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. First, instead of focusing on social rights, we construct an alternative path to identifying welfare regimes starting from the welfare mix. Second, we incorporate active labour market policies (ALMP) as a key variable of th…
Old Age Poverty in Developing Countries: Contributions and Dependence in Later Life
Labour markets and the (hyphenated) welfare regime in Latin America
This article deploys a welfare regime approach to examine changes in social policy in Latin America since the 'lost decade'. Before the 'lost decade' the welfare regime in Latin America could best be described as 'conservative/informal'. It was 'truncated' because the main welfare institutions, social insurance and employment protection, did not extend beyond workers in formal employment. The article shows that the structure of the labour market …
Social Protection in Sub-Saharan Africa: Getting the Politics Right
Social Transfers and Growth: What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Find Out
An Audit of the Welfare Modelling Business
The ‘welfare modelling business’ has become central to comparative social policy in recent years. However, we argue that one important element in this literature, the usefulness of identifying ‘ideal types’ of welfare production that support theoretical development, has been neglected. While much effort has been devoted to the results of the number and composition of the worlds, insufficient attention has been paid to the analytical basis of welf…
Social protection and poverty
Barrientos A. Social protection and poverty Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 240–249 © 2011 United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), International Journal of Social Welfare © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. In the last decade, social protection has emerged as a policy framework employed to address poverty and vulnerability in developing countries. The article links social protect…
New Forms of Social Assistance and the Evolution of Social Protection in Latin America
This article discusses the evolution of social protection in Latin America and proposes a conceptualisation and contextualisation of new forms of social assistance. It begins by outlining the main features of social protection prior to the 'lost decade' of the 1980s and the changes enforced by crises and structural adjustment. It then focuses on the new forms of social assistance emerging in the region, especially conditional and unconditional in…
Social citizenship for the global poor? The worldwide spread of social assistance
The notion of citizenship has universalistic claims, but in practice citizenship goes along with exclusions. Households in poverty are a test case. Social assistance for those in poverty is a rather unlikely source of citizenship because it blends inclusion and exclusion, decommodification and commodification. But we argue that the development of social assistance since the 1950s (in the global North) and since the late 1990s (in the global South…
New Developments in Latin America's Social Policy
This article introduces a special section focusing on the social policy reforms of recent years in Latin America. The essay identifies and discusses the principal trends and challenges in social policy in the region since the 1980s, before providing a summary of the special section and linking up the themes of the four contributions that follow. These highlight the variety of approaches adopted, as well as the differing assessments of recent deve…
Pensions, poverty and wellbeing in later life: Comparative research from South Africa and Brazil
Poverty Reduction: The Missing Piece of Pension Reform in Latin America
Employment‐based pension plans constitute the main form of pension provision in Latin America. Although recent pension reform in the region has focused on strengthening these, old‐age poverty remains high in most countries in the region, with older people over‐represented among the poor. The article argues that ensuring old‐age support for poor and vulnerable groups involves a different set of priorities and options for pension reform, namely a s…
Justice-based social assistance
What are the main objectives of social protection institutions in developing countries? What should be their scope and reach? What is the source of their legitimacy? Finding appropriate answers to these questions is essential to understanding, and shaping, the emergence of welfare institutions in low- and middle-income countries. Most available answers rely on instrumental arguments. Few make reference to normative principles. This article draws …
Can Social Protection Tackle Chronic Poverty
Covid-19 and Social Protection in Latin America
The paper considers the role of social protection in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods and in addressing the impact of the economic crisis ahead
The role of tax‐financed social security
This article provides a reassessment of the role of tax‐financed social security. It outlines the relevant trends in developed and developing countries and discusses qualitative changes in the role and approach to tax‐financed social security. It then assesses emergent forms of tax‐financed social security in developing countries. It considers in particular their focus, scope, design and dynamics. It concludes that emergent tax‐financed social se…
A Decade of Sub-national Pro-poor Growth in Pakistan
The Equity Challenge in China’s Higher Education Finance Policy
Social assistance and inclusive growth
The expansion of social assistance in low‐ and middle‐income countries raises important issues for inclusive growth. Labour is by far the principal asset of low‐income groups. Changes in the quantity, quality, and allocation of labour associated with social assistance will impact on the productive capacity of low‐income groups and therefore on inclusive growth. The article re‐assesses the findings reported by impact evaluations of social assistan…
Is There a Role for Social Pensions in A sia
Rapid population ageing and economic transformation in A sia underline the policy challenges associated with ensuring income security in old age. This article examines the potential role of social pensions in securing old‐age income security in A sia. It assesses the main policy trade‐offs associated with adopting alternative social pension designs, especially around two critical policy points: the comparative advantages of social assistance and …
Social transfers and child protection in the South
Most low and middle-income countries have implemented programmes providing transfers to families in poverty, often with a focus on children. The paper examines the potential effects of social transfers in these countries on child protection outcomes: the reduction of violence, exploitation and abuse of children, family separation and improved birth registration. The analysis is based on database including information on 79 impact evaluations in 2…
The Rise of Social Assistance in Brazil
The rise of social assistance in Brazil has been remarkable. The 1988 Constitution signalled a renewed 'social contract' leading to citizenship-based social assistance providing guaranteed income to older and disabled people in poverty. Municipal activism in the 1990s extended the provision of direct transfers to all households in poverty through Bolsa Escola and other programmes later consolidated into Bolsa Família. This article studies the ori…
Health Policy in Chile: The Return of the Public Sector
Health policy in Chile has mirrored the main changes in economic policy in recent times. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed centralisation of public health care into a National Health Service. Neoliberal policies in the 1970s and 1980s refocused health policy onto extending the scope for private insurance and provision in health care. The return to democracy in 1990 has produced a reappraisal of health policy, with the emphasis on strengthening and im…
Introduction: Twenty Five Years of the Welfare Modelling Business
Gosta Esping-Andersen's (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism has become one of the most cited works in social policy (over 20,600 Google Scholar citations; 20 October 2014). This path-breaking work, with its identification of three distinct forms of welfare capitalism in high income countries, has become the basis for a whole academic industry described as the Welfare Modelling Business (Abrahamson 1999; Powell and Barrientos 2011). Acco…
Protecting Capability, Eradicating Extreme Poverty: Chile Solidarioand the Future of Social Protection
Social protection has emerged as a strong policy framework addressing poverty and vulnerability in developing countries. The growing literature on social protection largely focuses on the relative effectiveness of different social protection programmes, but seldom makes a link to underlying conceptual frameworks. The paper argues that the capability approach can provide a sound foundation for social protection and discusses in some detail Chile S…
Pension Reform and Economic Development in Chile
Pension Reform In Latin America
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Pension reform and pension coverae in Chile: Lessons for other countries
Pension Reform and Pension Coverage in Chile: Lesson for Other Countries
The Changing Face of Pensions in Latin America: Design and Prospects of Individual Capitalization Pension Plans
This paper discusses the spread of individual capitalization pension plans in Latin America in the 1990s. Following the example of Chile in 1980, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru have all introduced individual capitalization pension schemes in the 1990s. The paper discusses the rationale for the reforms and compares the main design features of the reformed pension systems in these countries. Lastly, the likely success of pension r…
Pension reform, personal pensions and gender differences in pension coverage
Reforming health insurance in Argentina and Chile
The paper examines the recent reforms of health insurance in Chile and Argentina. These partially replace social health insurance with individual insurance administered through the private sector. In Chile, reforms in the early 1980s allowed private health insurance funds to compete for affiliates with the social health insurance system. In Argentina, reforms in the 1990s aim to open up the union-administered social insurance system to competitio…
Health Policy in Chile: The Return of the Public Sector
Health policy in Chile has mirrored the main changes in economic policy in recent times. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed centralisation of public health care into a National Health Service. Neoliberal policies in the 1970s and 1980s refocused health policy onto extending the scope for private insurance and provision in health care. The return to democracy in 1990 has produced a reappraisal of health policy, with the emphasis on strengthening and im…
Old Age Poverty in Developing Countries: Contributions and Dependence in Later Life
Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America: Social Policy in Development Contexts
Written by a team of internationally respected experts, this book explores the conditions under which social policy, defined as the public pursuit of secure welfare, operates in the poorer regions of the world. Social policy in advanced capitalist countries operates through state intervention to compensate for the inadequate welfare outcomes of the labour market. Such welfare regimes cannot easily be reproduced in poorer regions of the world wher…
Conceptualising in/security regimes
This chapter is one result of our dialogue between European social policy and the sociology of development. I was charged with the task of exploring how the concepts of 'welfare regime', 'social exclusion' and 'social policy' might be usefully adapted for understanding African realities in the context of a growing interest in the notion of 'global social policy' and the increasing merger of development and (military) security (Duffield 2001). My …
Informal security regimes: The strength of relationships
This chapter argues that the poorer regions of the world do not comfortably conform to the two key assumptions upon which the OECD model of welfare state regime relies: a legitimate state; and a pervasive, formal sector labour market. This immediately sets up the two key interactive issues of governance and the socio-economic circumstances of the common man (and woman). These circumstances are understood in this chapter through the metaphor of th…
The dynamics of Africa's in/security regimes
In this chapter I use the in/security model developed in chapter 3 to analyse insecurity and welfare on the continent of Africa. The in/security model has five main components: the structural relationships and dynamics involved in the generation of insecurity; mobilisation outcomes; rectification mix; in/security outcomes; and stratification outcomes. It can be used to analyse regimes in long-term equilibrium, regimes in short-term equilibrium ('…
Latin America: Towards a liberal-informal welfare regime
Esping-Andersen (1990; 1999) has developed a typology of welfare regimes for developed countries. His analysis focuses on the production of welfare, understood as the articulation of welfare programmes and institutions – including the state, markets and households – insuring households against social risks. In his later book he notes that understanding welfare regimes, and their change over time, involves '(a) a diagnosis of the changing distribu…
Welfare regimes in development contexts: A global and regional analysis
The purpose of this chapter is to adapt the welfare regime paradigm in order to throw light on social policy and human development in the contemporary world, and to instigate an empirical analysis to map the pattern of regimes across the developing and transitional zones of the global system. It begins from and builds on my background in two fields of study: the political economy of social policy in the advanced capitalist world and the theorisat…
Welfare regimes and the welfare mix
We present a different approach to appraising welfare regimes, stressing different dimensions, variables and techniques to those used by Esping‐Andersen in his path‐breaking work entitledThe Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. First, instead of focusing on social rights, we construct an alternative path to identifying welfare regimes starting from the welfare mix. Second, we incorporate active labour market policies (ALMP) as a key variable of th…
Can Social Protection Tackle Chronic Poverty
Chronic Poverty and Social Protection: Introduction
How efficient are pension fund managers in Chile
The paper measures and evaluates technical efficiency among pension fund managers in Chile. Recent pension reform has established pension fund management market in nine countries in Latin America. The new pension providers compete for affiliates on the basis of fees, rates of return, and quality of service, and are subject to extensive regulation. Applying data envelopment analysis to data from Chile 1982-1999, the paper examines issues of effici…
Reducing Child Poverty with Cash Transfers: A Sure Thing?
Children are disproportionately represented among the income‐poor, many suffer from severe deprivation, and their poverty and vulnerability have cumulative and long‐term consequences. This article provides a comparative examination of the poverty‐reduction effectiveness of cash transfer programmes targeting children, focusing on three types of such programmes: the Child Support Grant in South Africa, family allowances in transition countries, and…
Poverty Reduction: The Missing Piece of Pension Reform in Latin America
Employment‐based pension plans constitute the main form of pension provision in Latin America. Although recent pension reform in the region has focused on strengthening these, old‐age poverty remains high in most countries in the region, with older people over‐represented among the poor. The article argues that ensuring old‐age support for poor and vulnerable groups involves a different set of priorities and options for pension reform, namely a s…
Understanding Conditions in Income Transfer Programmes: A Brief(est) Note
The role of tax‐financed social security
This article provides a reassessment of the role of tax‐financed social security. It outlines the relevant trends in developed and developing countries and discusses qualitative changes in the role and approach to tax‐financed social security. It then assesses emergent forms of tax‐financed social security in developing countries. It considers in particular their focus, scope, design and dynamics. It concludes that emergent tax‐financed social se…
Keeping the Promise of Social Security in Latin America - by Indermit Gill, Truman Packard and Juan Yermo
Social Protection for the Poor and Poorest: Concepts, Policies and Politics
Economics (62 works) · Political science (56 works) · Economic growth (41 works) · Development economics (37 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (32 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Poverty (29 works) · Law (27 works) · Income, Poverty, and Inequality (26 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (26 works)