Can Economic Instruments Change Mindsets? The Impact of a Conditional Cash Transfer on Aspirations of Adolescent Girls

The role of social norms in forming aspirations is very important in developing countries where the women are mainly confined within the household. This has created a lack of demand for education among adolescent girls and a tendency to marry early. While governments have tried to remove gender disparity by increasing educational infrastructure for girls, it is well acknowledged that changing the sticky mindset is much more difficult and designing policies for this is a huge challenge. This paper tries to address this issue and estimates the impact of a celebrated conditional cash transfer (CCT), named Kanyashree Prakalpa (KP), on the aspirations of adolescent girls in West Bengal, India. KP, the conditional cash transfer scheme in West Bengal, India offers INR 25,000 (equivalent to US$330) to all girls who continue their education and remain unmarried till their 18th birthday. The study involves the use of both quantitative (like propensity score matching) and qualitative methods to establish that the CCT, through financial inclusion of adolescent girls, created a significant improvement in their aspiration scores. On the basis of a primary survey on 1050 households situated in three selected districts of the state, the study compares the aspiration scores of beneficiaries of the scheme, with those not availing the program after propensity score matching between the treatment and control groups. The study shows that the CCT, which was intended to prevent underage marriage and dropout among adolescent girls between thirteen to eighteen actually managed to change their mindset and enabled them to dream beyond marriage and envisage a future where they would be studying or working at the age of twenty five. The qualitative analysis complemented the quantitative results and found that KP eased the internal constraints of the adolescent girls through giving them access to their very own money in their bank account and this helped them to dream big. This paper, unlike other impact evaluations of CCTs, traces the impact of a aptly designed economic instrument of CCT on the mindsets of beneficiaries rather than economic outcomes. Though the pathway is essentially economic, it succeeded in assuaging a profound social and cultural barrier, thus offering new windows for policy makers in any developing country.