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Must conditional cash transfer programs be conditioned to be effective?: The impact of conditioning transfers on school enrollment in Mexico

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Author Info
de Brauw, Alan
Hoddinott, John

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Abstract

"A growing body of evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs can have strong, positive effects on a range of welfare indicators for poor households in developing countries. However, the contribution of individual program components toward achieving these outcomes is not well understood. This paper contributes to filling this gap by explicitly testing the importance of conditionality on one specific outcome related to human capital formation (namely school enrollment), using data collected during the evaluation of Mexico's Programa de Educación, Salud, y Alimentación (PROGRESA) CCT program. We exploit the fact that some PROGRESA beneficiaries who received transfers did not receive the forms needed to monitor their children's attendance at school. We use a variety of techniques, including nearest neighbor matching and household fixed effects regressions, to show that the lack of these forms reduced the likelihood of children attending school, with this effect being most pronounced among children who were transitioning to lower secondary school. We provide substantial evidence that these findings are not driven by unobservable characteristics related to households or localities." from Author's Abstract

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Paper provided by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in its series IFPRI discussion papers with number 757.

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Date of creation: 2008
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Handle: RePEc:fpr:ifprid:757

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Related research
Keywords: Conditionality; Cash transfers; School enrollment; School attendance; Progresa; Social protection; Education;

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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    Other versions:
  3. Maluccio, John A. & Flores, Rafael, 2005. "Impact evaluation of a conditional cash transfer program: the Nicaraguan Red de Protección Social," Research reports 141, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). [Downloadable!]
  4. Edward C. Norton & Hua Wang & Chunrong Ai, 2004. "Computing interaction effects and standard errors in logit and probit models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 4(2), pages 154-167, June. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Heckman, James J & Ichimura, Hidehiko & Todd, Petra, 1998. "Matching as an Econometric Evaluation Estimator," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 65(2), pages 261-94, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. A. Smith, Jeffrey & E. Todd, Petra, 2005. "Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 305-353. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Hoddinott, John & Skoufias, Emmanuel, 2004. "The Impact of PROGRESA on Food Consumption," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(1), pages 37-61, October.
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  9. Alberto Abadie & Guido W. Imbens, 2006. "Large Sample Properties of Matching Estimators for Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(1), pages 235-267, 01. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Burtless, Gary, 1995. "The Case for Randomized Field Trials in Economic and Policy Research," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 63-84, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Schady, Norbert & Araujo, Maria Caridad, 2006. "Cash transfers, conditions, school enrollment, and child work : evidence from a randomized experiment in Ecuador," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3930, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  12. Joseph G. Altonji & Todd E. Elder & Christopher R. Taber, 2005. "Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 151-184, February.
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  13. Richard K. Crump & V. Joseph Hotz & Guido W. Imbens & Oscar A. Mitnik, 2006. "Moving the Goalposts: Addressing Limited Overlap in the Estimation of Average Treatment Effects by Changing the Estimand," NBER Technical Working Papers 0330, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Paul Schultz, T., 2004. "School subsidies for the poor: evaluating the Mexican Progresa poverty program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 199-250, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Adato, Michelle, 2008. "Integrating survey and ethnographic methods to evaluate conditional cash transfer programs:," IFPRI discussion papers 810, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). [Downloadable!]
  2. Sudhanshu Handa & John Maluccio, 2008. "Matching the gold standard: Comparing experimental and non-experimental evaluation techniques for a geographically targeted program," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0813, Middlebury College, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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