Conditional transfer programmes currently cover over 22 million families in Latin America and the Caribbean, 12 million of which are in Brazil and 5 million in Mexico. Bolsa Familia and Oportunidades, followed by the Familias enAccion (“Families in Action”) programme in Colombia and the human development grants in Ecuador, are the region’s largest programmes in terms of the absolute number of beneficiaries. In Brazil and Mexico, where the programmes have grown the most, the number of recipients exceeds the number of people in indigence, corresponding to 83% and 71% of the population living in poverty, respectively.10 In comparison, the scope of conditional transfer programmes in Central America does not exceed 20% of the poor population (see figures II. In 1998-2002 in Ecuador, the Bono Solidario (’’Solidarity Grant”), a non-conditional cash transfer, preceded the Bono de Desarrollo Humano (“Human Development Grant”) (Naranjo, 2008a).