The “Bolsa familia” programme in Brazil and the ‘"Oportunitades” programme in Mexico have been running for years, have reached almost full national coverage, and have made a significant and tested dent on poverty in both countries, filling wide gaps in national social policies. International organisations such as the World Bank have helped disseminate and replicate the approach as one of the principal tools to attain the MDGs (Fiszbein and Schady, 2009). Pakistan and Indonesia have in place large unconditional cash transfers schemes, which in the latter country has been recently transformed into a conditional programme.