Cooperation, regional development, and international migration. Impacts of the ‘Youth Building the Future’ and ‘Sowing Life’ Programs in El Salvador and Honduras, 2022

Abstract

Migration from Central America to North America has increased in recent years. Considering that migration takes place as a response to the existence of regional differences in wellbeing of the population, the governments of El Salvador and Honduras agreed with that of Mexico to promote development in their two countries through the implementation, in 2020, of two Mexican social programs, ‘Youth Building the Future’ and ‘Sowing Life’ to improve the quality of life of their populations and thus inhibiting migration from those two countries. This paper reports results from an evaluation of the impacts of those two programs, in the populations’ wellbeing and intentions to migrate in those two Central American Countries. With the help of regression analysis applied to information from a survey carried out by the Programs’ personnel in the spring of 2022, the Programs are evaluated through the contrast of the hypothesis that their cash transfers positively impact the beneficiaries’ productivity and income and thus their families’ wellbeing, which, in turn inhibit their intention to migrate to other countries. The results amply confirm the hypothesis and show statistically significant relations between those socioeconomic variables and the reduction in the beneficiaries’ intentions to migrate, which somehow validates the social policy adopted to reduce the recent migration from Central America.