Peor es nada: Social Impact Bonds, measured outcomes, and employment development in Colombia

This doctoral thesis examines Colombia’s first Social Impact Bond, Empleando Futuro, a financial instrument offering returns to investors if predefined outcomes, specifically, job placement and three to six-month retention in formal employment for at least 766 beneficiaries, primarily victims of Colombia’s armed conflict, were met. The bond used a Payment by Results model: private investors provided upfront capital, and repayment by the Colombian government, the Swiss Economic Cooperation Agency, and the Inter-American Development Bank was contingent on independently verified outcomes. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, this research situates Empleando Futuro within Colombia’s history of international development interventions and under the growing influence of audit culture, where measurable outcomes define success. It explores the perspectives of promoters and administrators seeking efficient use of public funds and investor returns; practitioners under pressure to meet measurable targets; and beneficiaries who saw formal employment as a route out of poverty, within Colombia’s precarious labour market. Drawing on anthropological perspectives on development, quantification, and financialisation, the thesis shows how Empleando Futuro reshaped social service provision into a financial operation privileging investor interests. It did so by reducing unemployment to calculable risks and outcomes capable of generating financial value, and by normalising a logic of peor es nada (something is better than nothing), accepting outcomes that satisfy investor metrics as sufficient, even when failing to address beneficiaries’ broader employment challenges. This research contributes to anthropological understandings of financialisation in development, highlighting how social problems are transformed into investment opportunities and how financial instruments redefine what counts as positive social impact—legitimising private sector profit in development while failing to produce substantial social change.