The paper examines exit conditions in antipoverty programmes, conditional cash transfers in particular. The weight of current practice is to apply entry conditions to establish exit from programmes. The paper discusses (a) whether this practice is consistent with the underlying poverty index minimized by conditional cash transfers, and (b) the impact of exclusion on households at the margins of eligibility in the context of Colombia's Familias en Acción using a regression discontinuity design. We conclude that current practice in conditional cash transfer programmes as regards the use of entry conditions to assess programme exit is not supported analytically or empirically.