Cash Incentives for Healthy Families in Mexico

Getting paid to keep your family healthy? That’s the idea behind Mexico’s innovative conditional cash transfer program, Oportunidades, which gives cash payouts to parents who take steps to keep themselves and their children well. The program is an effort to alleviate some of the effects of poverty and reduce severe health incidents down the line. The program also rewards education, allowing some families who would normally need extra income from another wage-earner to keep their children in school instead.

Ray Suarez reports from rural Morelos on how the program works, what critics say about its weaknesses and why it has become an important model in this global recession. Check out photos from Suarez’s trip at the NewsHour’s Flickr page.