Strategies for reducing poverty and extreme poverty in Latin America: can integration social protection programs follow the successful path cash transfer programs have done?

This paper intends to contribute to the general debate on how social protection policies can be a response to multidimensional poverty through the comparison of two current sets of anti-poverty social policies in Latin America: Conditional Cash Transfer Programs and the Integration of Social Protection Programs. The comparison addresses the similarities and differences of each program as well as the main challenges Conditional Cash Transfers have faced in their implementation in order to be successful and how relevant lessons learned could be applied to Integration Social Protection Programs; also tackles the discussions surrounding Conditional Cash Transfers under the lens of the Integration Social Protection Programs. The discussions brought are: targeting/universalism; conditional/unconditional; incentives and gender. At the end the paper focuses on the Colombian experience in the implementation Integration Social Protection Program called Red Juntos, presenting the strategy and its main implementation challenges.