Director of FGV Social gives talks at Harvard and Columbia

06/05/2016

The Director of the FGV Center for Social Policy (FGV Social), Marcelo Neri, gave a talk at Harvard University on April 19, and another talk at Columbia University on April 21, and also gave a class to financial ministers from more than 10 countries, including Turkey, Thailand, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, Cape Verde and Bhutan.

At Columbia University, Neri’s talk was organized by the School of International and Public Affairs and the Columbia Global Centers of Rio de Janeiro. It provided the basis for a chapter of the book he is writing about conditioned cash transfer (CCT) programs.

His presentation at Columbia, entitled “A Next Generation of Conditional Cash Transfers?” gave an overview of the impact of CCT programs in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America. During the talk, Neri talked about the lessons learned from the Brazilian federal government’s experiences, such as its “Bolsa Família” and “Bolsa Escola” welfare schemes, as well as sub-national programs such as “Família Carioca” and “Renda Melhor,” developed by FGV Social for the municipal and state governments of Rio de Janeiro, respectively. The key thing, Neri said, is to list the ingredients desired and not desired for the next generation of CCT programs.

At Harvard, besides giving a class and providing health-related coaching for finance ministers, Neri also gave a talk about Brazil’s social evolution at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

See the complete presentation in http://cps.fgv.br/Harvard_2016