A welfare program in Mexico is successfully breaking the cycle of poverty, just as Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs (like Medicaid and Medicare) did here. Yet at some point, Republicans began to deride its results, saying it proved “throwing money” at the problem did nothing - and now, it seems to be conventional wisdom that it didn’t work. As long as the programs were adequately funded, it did:

The change did not come gradually. Lewis’s description of the culture of poverty probably still fit Paso de Coyutla 10 years ago. It doesn’t anymore. The town has transformed itself in the past decade, a result of a deceptively simple government program that is now rewriting poverty-fighting strategies throughout Latin America and around the world. The program is called Oportunidades, and in 1997, Paso de Coyutla became one of the first places in Mexico to enroll. The program gives the poor cash, but unlike traditional welfare programs, it conditions the receipt of that cash on activities designed to break the culture of poverty and keep the poor from transmitting that culture to their children.

Until recently, for example, children like Maleny did not go to high school. Though Maleny’s school is public, families often prefer not to pay the fees they’re assessed or to pay for school supplies, food and transportation. More important, if she were not in school, she, too, could be working in the fields. Such work is especially common among girls, as their education has been widely derided as a waste of money in rural Mexico — why educate someone who is just going to get married?

Now Maleny goes to school because her mother is enrolled in Oportunidades. Solís gets $61 a month from the Mexican government on the condition that Maleny goes and maintains good attendance. (If she worked in the fields and earned a typical salary, she would be paid $7.40 for an eight-hour day.) Such grants start for students in third grade, increase for each year of school and are higher for girls, which gives families added incentive to send them.

Solís also receives money for the family’s food — again, subject to certain requirements. She gets a $27-a-month basic food grant if she takes her family to regular preventive health checkups at Paso de Coyutla’s clinic, which provides vaccinations, pap smears and the like. She must also attend a monthly workshop on a health topic, like purifying drinking water. In total, the grants the family receives for food and the oldest three children’s educations come to almost as much as Hernández earns farming.

Imagine if we’d spent all that money we’ve spent on the Iraq war for programs like this…