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Smarter through social protection? Evaluating the impact of Ethiopia’s safety-net on child cognitive abilities

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  • Marta Favara
  • Catherine Porter
  • Tassew Woldehanna

Abstract

Ethiopia’s productive safety net is the second largest Social Protection Program in sub-Saharan Africa and has been rolled out to almost 10 million beneficiaries since 2005; its effects are therefore of general interest. We provide the first estimates of its impact on children’s cognitive abilities. To identify impacts of this program, we exploit four rounds of data on a cohort of children surveyed repeatedly between 2002 and 2013. We find a small but significant positive effect of the programme on both numeracy skills and vocabulary. This is driven mainly by children in households that had graduated (left) the programme just before 2013. We argue that this is at least partially related to time allocation: graduates of the programme spent more time in school than continuing beneficiaries. We also find evidence that the maths (though not language) improvement is more pronounced for boys.

Suggested Citation

  • Marta Favara & Catherine Porter & Tassew Woldehanna, 2019. "Smarter through social protection? Evaluating the impact of Ethiopia’s safety-net on child cognitive abilities," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(1), pages 79-96, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:oxdevs:v:47:y:2019:i:1:p:79-96
    DOI: 10.1080/13600818.2018.1499884
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    Cited by:

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    2. Hotak, Nematullah & Kaneko, Shinji, 2022. "Fiscal illusion of the stated preferences of government officials regarding interministerial policy packages: A case study on child labor in Afghanistan," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 285-298.
    3. Jeffery, Karli & Chatterjee, Ishita & Lavin, Tina & Li, Ian W., 2020. "Young lives and wealthy minds: The nexus between household consumption capacity and childhood cognitive ability," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 89-104.
    4. Freund, Richard & Favara, Marta & Porter, Catherine & Behrman, Jere R., 2022. "Social Protection and Foundational Cognitive Skills during Adolescence: Evidence from a Large Public Works Programme," IZA Discussion Papers 15551, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • O22 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Project Analysis

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