Effects Of Conditional Cash Transfers Research Articles

THE LONG‐TERM EFFECTS OF CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFERS ON CHILD LABOR AND SCHOOL ENROLLMENT

This paper investigates the long‐term effects of conditional cash transfers on school attainment and child labor. To this end, we construct a dynamic heterogeneous agent model, calibrate it with Brazilian data, and introduce a policy similar to the Brazilian Bolsa Família. Our results suggest that this type of policy has a very strong impact on educational outcomes, sharply increasing primary school completion. The conditional transfer is also able to reduce the share of working children from 22% to 17%. We then compute the transition to the new steady state and show that the program actually increases child labor over the short run, because the transfer is not enough to completely cover the schooling costs, so children have to work to be able to comply with the program's schooling eligibility requirement. We also evaluate the impacts on poverty, inequality, and welfare. (JEL O11, I25, J24)

Depression, retention in care, and uptake of PMTCT service in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo: a prospective cohort

ABSTRACTThere is a clear need for effective strategies to address the factors that affect retention, or lost-to-follow-up (LTFU) and adherence to HIV care and treatment. Depression in particular may play an important role in the high rates of LTFU along the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) cascade in sub-Saharan Africa. This study assessed the association between prenatal depression and (1) LTFU or (2) uptake of PMTCT services. As part of a randomized control trial to evaluate the effect of conditional cash transfers on retention in and uptake of PMTCT services, newly diagnosed HIV-infected women, ≤32 weeks pregnant, registering for antenatal care (ANC), in 85 clinics in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), were recruited and followed-up until LTFU, death, transfer out, or six weeks postpartum. Participants were interviewed at enrollment using a questionnaire which included the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). Depression was defined as a PHQ-9 score of ≥15. Among 433 women enrolled, 51 (11.8%) had a PHQ-9 score ≥15 including 15 (3.5%) with a score ≥20. At six weeks postpartum, 67 (15.5%) were LFTU and 331 (76.4%) were in care and had accepted all available PTMCT services. Of participants with depression at enrollment, 17.7% (9/51) were LTFU at six weeks postpartum compared to 15.2% (58/382) among those without, but the association was not statistically significant. On the other hand, 78.4% (40/51) of participants with prenatal depression were in care at six weeks postpartum and had attended all their scheduled visits and accepted available services compared to 76.2% (291/382) among those without depression. In this cohort of newly diagnosed HIV-infected pregnant women, prenatal depression assessed with a PHQ-9 score ≥15 was not a strong predictor of LTFU among newly diagnosed HIV-infected women in Kinshasa, DRC.

Introduction: Assessing the Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin American Societies in the Early Twenty-First Century

Latin America has emerged as a social policy ‘laboratory’ in recent decades and most prominent among the social policy innovations developed in the region are the so-called Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes (Cecchini et al., 2015; Borges Sugiyama, 2011; Martínez Franzoni et al., 2009). They have been widely promoted by international organisations across the world as policy instruments that enhance human capital and the agency of participants while reducing poverty and inequality and promoting co-responsibility and self-help in the long-term (see Sandberg, 2015; Bastagli, 2009; Lomelí, 2008, 2009).

External and Internal Validity of a Geographic Quasi-Experiment Embedded in a Cluster-Randomized Experiment

Abstract This chapter analyzes a geographic quasi-experiment embedded in a cluster-randomized experiment in Honduras. In the experiment, average treatment effects of conditional cash transfers on school enrollment and child labor were large – especially in the poorest experimental blocks – and could be generalized to a policy-relevant population given the original sample selection criteria. In contrast, the geographic quasi-experiment yielded point estimates that, for two of three dependent variables, were attenuated. A judicious policy analyst without access to the experimental results might have provided misleading advice based on the magnitude of point estimates. We assessed two main explanations for the difference in point estimates, related to external and internal validity.

Expanded Social Protection May Do More Harm Than Good: A Pessimistic Review

AbstractThere is growing interest in expanded social protection programs, even for the poorest countries. Technology now allows cash transfers to be delivered to masses of people with only weak connections to the formal economy. Also there are demonstrated effects of conditional cash transfers in improving aspects of human capital. Yet it is doubtful that social protection programs can provide a floor sufficient to eradicate extreme poverty without harming incentives and without unduly taxing a small minority of highly skilled, and increasingly mobile, workers. Long‐term fiscal obligations from expanded social transfers, potential for distorted work choices, unknown interactions with informal safety nets and difficulties of targeting beneficiaries all suggest grounds for caution.

Conditional cash transfers, civil conflict and insurgent influence: Experimental evidence from the Philippines

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are an increasingly popular tool for reducing poverty in conflict-affected areas. Despite their growing popularity, there is limited evidence on how CCT programs affect conflict and theoretical predictions are ambiguous. We estimate the effect of conditional cash transfers on civil conflict in the Philippines by exploiting an experiment that randomly assigned eligibility for a CCT program at the village level. We find that cash transfers caused a substantial decrease in conflict-related incidents in treatment villages relative to control villages in the first 9months of the program. Using unique data on local insurgent influence, we also find that the program reduced insurgent influence in treated villages. An analysis of possible spillovers yields inconclusive results. While we find no statistical evidence of spillovers, we also cannot rule out that the village-level effect was due to displacement of insurgent activity from treatment to control villages.

Economic impacts of conditional cash transfer programmes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The results of a systematic review of evidence on the effects of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes on household economic outcomes are presented. Out of 1076 original articles found through electronic and handsearches, 46 randomised and quasi-experimental impact evaluations were eligible for the review. The authors used statistical meta-analysis and analysis of programme mechanisms to explore heterogeneity in impacts between and within programmes. They conclude that, for households which benefited from those CCT programmes which have been rigorously evaluated, child labour decreased, particularly for boys, household consumption and investment increased and consumption smoothing improved. In addition, there were limited effects on girls’ labour and mixed effects on adult labour supply in beneficiary households. Limited evidence has been collected on locality-wide impacts in beneficiary communities.

Politicisation of Conditional Cash Transfers: The Case of Guatemala

This article complements existing studies on the incumbency effects of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) by analysing the principal mechanisms by which Mi Familia Progresa (MIFAPRO) in Guatemala became increasingly politicised through clientelistic vote buying and threats of programme expulsion in case of non‐electoral support. It finds that MIFAPRO constitutes an emblematic case with mixed effects that are particularly relevant in the diffusion of CCTs to other developing countries.

The Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Social Engagement and Trust in Institutions: Evidence from Peru's Juntos Programme

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes have rapidly expanded throughout the developing world. These programmes have been relatively effective at improving living standards and producing behavioural changes expected to improve human capital among beneficiary children. Little is known, however, about the effect of CCTs on outcomes other than those they intend to modify but which may nonetheless be important for achieving these programmes’ longer-term objectives and improving development prospects more generally. This paper addresses this gap by evaluating the effects of CCTs on membership in social organisations and trust in institutions, using evidence from Peru’s Juntos programme. The analysis employs household- and district-level data and a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the programme effects, focusing on the 133 districts in which the programme was implemented during 2006. Its effects among both eligible and non-eligible households are estimated. The programme does not have effects on membership in social organisations on either group of households. It increases trust in institutions related to programme conditions among the eligible population, but it decreases trust in the ombudsman’s office, a public institution that has channelled grievances arising from exclusion from the programme. While the results regarding eligible households are encouraging news for proponents, those pertaining to non-eligible households reveal a negative unintended consequence that should be a source of concern.

The impact of conditional cash transfers on child health in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

The review aimed to assess the effectiveness of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in improving child health in low- and middle-income countries. Seven electronic databases were searched for papers: MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed, PsychINFO, BIOSIS Previews, Academic Search Complete, and CSA Sociological Abstracts. The included studies comprised of randomised controlled trials and controlled before-and-after studies evaluating the impact of CCTs on child health. Due to the substantial heterogeneity of the studies, a narrative synthesis was conducted on the extracted data. Sixteen studies predominantly from Latin American countries met the inclusion criteria. The outcomes reported by the studies in relation to CCTs' effectiveness in improving child health were reduction in morbidity risk, improvement in nutritional outcomes, health services utilisation, and immunisation coverage. The review suggests that to a large extent, CCTs are effective in improving child health by addressing child health determinants such as access to health care, child and maternal nutrition, morbidity risk, immunisation coverage, and household poverty in developing countries particularly middle-income countries. Of importance to both policy and practice, it appears that CCTs require effective functioning of health care systems to effectively promote child health.

Effect of conditional cash transfer on choice and utilization of contraceptives among newly married couples in Satara district

Context: Satara district of western Maharashtra is in late expanding phase of demographic cycle. Postponement of first pregnancy with the use of reversible contraceptives is the need of the hour. Since 2007, Satara district is implementing a conditional cash transfer scheme second honeymoon package (SHP). Objectives: The objectives of this study are: (1) To find out the effect of conditional cash transfer on choice and utilization of contraceptives among participants of SHP. (2) To identify various barriers to the use of contraceptives. Materials and Methods: This was an evaluation study of a community based interventional program. Cases were the participants of SHP program while the controls were the couples residing in the same village as that of participants and married in the same year. Enquiries were made about their knowledge of contraceptives, reasons of postponement, choice of contraceptives, problems faced while using them, perceived benefits of participation, reasons for non-participation and non-use of contraceptives, etc. Results: This study has found out that 24.8% controls and 57.6% participant couples were having knowledge of contraception before their marriage. Amongst the participants of the scheme and controls, male condom was the most popular method used by 80.8% participants, followed by oral pills by 9.22% couples. Contraception prevalence rate among control couples was 17.6%, while that in participants was 91.8%. Resistance from family members, side-effects and failure of contraceptives were some of the barriers to their use. Conclusions: Conditional cash transfer has encouraged the use of contraceptives in acceptors of SHP. By participating in SHP and postponing first pregnancy 15.8% could complete their education, job/career betterment achieved by 16.4% and 19.3% adored marital pleasure.

Editors’ Summary

Editors’ Summary Raquel Bernal, Marcela Eslava, Ugo Panizza, and Roberto Rigobón This issue of Economía consists of four papers. The first paper by Gladys López-Acevedo and Mónica Tinajero-Bravo looks at the effects of several programs aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises in Mexico on firm performance in the long term. The second paper by Eduardo Lora and Johanna Fajardo compares perception of one’s social ranking with objective measures of social ranking to find that there is a large difference between the two, partly because individuals incorporate a wide variety of wealth measures in their assessment apart from income. Verónica Amarante, Mery Ferrando, and Andrea Vigorito study the effects of conditional cash transfers on school attendance and child labor among teenagers in Uruguay in the third paper. Finally, Rodrigo Taborda discusses possible media bias in the reporting of exchange rate–related news during revaluation episodes in comparison with reporting during devaluation episodes in the fourth and last paper of this volume. In the first paper, Gladys López-Acevedo and Mónica Tinajero-Bravo estimate the effects of a variety of support programs aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises in Mexico by using a novel ten-year panel data set of firm-level data from 1994 to 2005. These programs comprise primarily business development services such as consulting services, training programs for workers, quality control practices, and export promotion, among others, and programs that support R&D activities. Rigorous evaluations of such programs are scarce, particularly in developing countries, owing to lack of appropriate data sets that contain longitudinal information and allow some correction for self-selection into program participation. López-Acevedo and Tinajero-Bravo link a firm panel data set with program participation information from a different source to estimate treatment effects by using fixed-effects models. The longitudinal dimension of the data proves to be extremely useful in allowing identification of effects that take a long time to realize after program participation begins. [End Page vii] The results indicate that three of the four programs for small and mediumsized enterprises assessed have been successful in improving firm outcomes such as sales, value added per worker, and exports. Programs that promote R&D activities have been particularly effective in these dimensions. However, these effects only show after three to four years following the start of program participation, so they are undetectable in cross-section data sets or panel data sets with a shorter span. In some cases, effects continue to increase (as much as threefold) from year 3 to year 10 of program participation. Alessandro Maffioli highlights several contributions of the paper. He notes that the construction of a long-term panel data set allows López-Acevedo and Tinajero-Bravo to address a variety of questions unanswered in the literature, owing to lack of appropriate data. However, Maffioli also indicates that it would have been extremely useful to understand not only individual program effects but also complementarities among them. In particular, the possibility of understanding coordination and sequencing of different policy instruments available for small and medium-sized enterprises is important for policy design. In the second paper, Eduardo Lora and Johanna Fajardo use a rich data set for sixteen Latin American countries to assess the gap between perceived social ranking and objective social ranking based on income measures. After showing that the gap is large, the authors proceed to explore the factors that most explain this difference. By using the usual definitions of middle class (income ranges from US$2 to US$13 per day or from 0.5 to 1.5 times the median income), the authors show that only 69 percent of middle-income individuals classify themselves as such according to the first definition and only about 45 percent do so according to the second one. The authors indicate that individuals consider a wide variety of measures of wealth apart from income when assessing their social ranking. These include human capital (education), access to financial services, access to public utilities, and ownership of durable goods such as a car, washing machine, television, or computer, and they also consider the presence of children in the household...

When Payouts Pay Off: Conditional Cash Transfers and Voting Behavior in Brazil 2002–10

This article estimates the electoral effects of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in three presidential elections in Brazil. It analyzes municipal‐level electoral results and survey data and employs matching techniques to reduce causal inference problems typical of observational studies. Results show that CCTs are associated with increased performance by the incumbent party presidential candidate in all three elections but that these effects have been reaped by incumbents from different parties. It also shows that CCTs have had no discernible impacts on party identification and the performance of incumbent parties in legislative elections. Together, these findings suggest that CCTs are significant in the short run, but lack the capacity to induce substantial long‐term voter realignments.

Adolescent Fertility in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Effects and Solutions

Adolescent fertility in low- and middle-income countries presents a severe impediment to development and can lead to school dropout lost productivity and the intergenerational transmission of poverty. However there is debate about whether adolescent pregnancy is a problem in and of itself or merely symptomatic of deeper ingrained disadvantage. To inform policy choices and create a revised research agenda for population and development this paper aggregates recent quantitative evidence on the socioeconomic consequences of and methods to reduce of teenage pregnancy in the developing world. The review finds variable results for all indicator types with the partial exception of knowledge-based indicators which increased in response to almost all evaluating interventions though it is not clear that such interventions necessarily lead to short- or long term-behavior change. The evidence base supporting the effectiveness of conditional cash transfers was relatively strong in comparison to other interventions. Similarly programs that lowered barriers to attending school or increased the opportunity cost of school absence are also supported by the literature. On the basis of these findings the authors argue that donors should adopt a rights-based approach to adolescent fertility and shift their focus from the proximate to distal causes of pregnancy including human rights abuses gender inequality child marriage and socioeconomic marginalization. Further research should be conducted to strengthen the evidence base by 1) establishing causality 2) understanding the differential impacts of adolescent fertility in different contexts and 3) investigating other the impact of adolescent fertility on other socioeconomic outcomes such as labor participation productivity and the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

O2-S2.04 Targeting HIV prevention efforts on HIV-infected men using conditional cash transfer (CCT): does it work?

BackgroundPreventing HIV infections in female spouses of HIV-infected men is limited by low HIV testing rates among these women who are at an increasingly high risk for HIV acquisition. We...

When Pay Outs Pay Off: Conditional Cash-Transfers and Voting Behavior in Brazil 2002---2010

This paper estimates the electoral effects of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) --- the fastest-growing social policy in the developing world --- in three presidential elections in Brazil. It analyzes municipal level electoral results and survey data, and employs matching techniques to reduce causal inference problems typical of observational studies. Results shows that CCTs are associated with increased performance by the incumbent party presidential candidate in all three elections, but that these effects have diminished over time, and have been reaped by incumbents from different parties. It also shows that CCTs have had no discernible impacts on party identification and the performance of incumbent parties in legislative elections. Together, these findings suggest that CCTs effects are short lived, similar to that of good economic performance in retrospective economic voting models, and as such, lack the capacity to induce substantial voter realignments.

Assessing the Long-Term Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Human Capital: Evidence from Colombia

Conditional cash transfers are programs under which poor families get a stipend provided they keep their children in school and take them for health checks. Although there is significant evidence showing that they have positive impacts on school participation, little is known about the long-term impacts of the programs on human capital. This paper investigates whether cohorts of children from poor households that benefited up to nine years from Familias en Accion, a conditional cash transfer program in Colombia, attained more school and performed better on academic tests at the end of high school. Identification of program impacts is derived from two different strategies using matching techniques with household surveys, and regression discontinuity design using a census of the poor and administrative records of the program. The authors show that, on average, participant children are 4 to 8 percentage points more likely than nonparticipant children to finish high school, particularly girls and beneficiaries in rural areas. Regarding long-term impact on tests scores, the analysis shows that program recipients who graduate from high school seem to perform at the same level as equally poor non-recipient graduates, even after correcting for possible selection bias when low-performing students enter school in the treatment group. Although the positive impacts on high school graduation may improve the employment and earning prospects of participants, the lack of positive effects on test scores raises the need to further explore policy actions to couple the program's objective of increasing human capital with enhanced learning.

Does supply matter? Initial schooling conditions and the effectiveness of conditional cash transfers for grade progression in Nicaragua

The authors use a randomised evaluation to examine the effect of a conditional cash transfer programme on grade progression in Nicaragua from 1999 to 2003, putting the spotlight on initial supply-side conditions and the extent to which they conditioned programme effectiveness. Their principal findings are that the programme had a substantial effect on grade progression and it was more effective in areas with autonomous schools. At the same time, it was also more effective in intervention areas with poor initial supply conditions as measured by indicators of grade availability and distance to school. These areas had lower outcomes before the programme, and thus more room for improvement. The results suggest that initial school supply conditions are not insurmountable obstacles for the successful implementation of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme, as long as these constraints are identified at the planning stage and mechanisms put in place to address them during execution.

A healthier start: The effect of conditional cash transfers on neonatal and infant mortality in rural Mexico

Conditional cash transfer programs seek to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty by building the human capital of poor children. Despite their popularity throughout the developing world, relatively little is known about their effect on children's health outcomes. This paper evaluates the impact of the Mexican conditional cash transfer program, Progresa, on two important health outcomes: infant and neonatal mortality. It exploits the phasing-in of Progresa over time throughout rural Mexico to identify the impact of the program. The paper shows that Progresa led to a large 17% decline in rural infant mortality among the treated, but did not reduce neonatal mortality on average. The benefit–cost ratio is between 1.3 and 3.6. Tests for heterogeneity show larger declines for some groups including those municipalities whose pre-program levels of mortality were above the median, and those that prior to the program had higher illiteracy rates, and less access to electricity.

Effects of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program on Children's Behavior Problems

Governments are increasingly using conditional cash transfer programs to reduce the negative effects of poverty on children's development. These programs have demonstrated benefits for children's nutrition and physical development, but the effect of conditional cash transfers on children's behaviors has not been systematically evaluated. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of a conditional cash transfer on children's behavior by using a quasi-experimental design. In 1997, the Mexican government initiated a large-scale conditional cash transfer (Oportunidades) in 506 very poor rural communities. Oportunidades provided cash transfers that were contingent on visits to medical practitioners, consumption of nutritional supplementation, and school enrollment. In 2003, an assessment of 4- to 6-year-old children in these households was conducted, and outcomes were compared with children from 152 additional poor rural communities who had been recruited by using rigorous matching procedures. The primary outcome measure for this analysis was maternal report of behavior problems in terms of anxiety/depressive and aggressive/oppositional symptoms. Analyses reported here compared 778 children from beneficiary households who had received 3.5 to 5.0 years of exposure to the program and a comparison group of 263 children who had received no exposure to the program at the time of assessment but whose families later enrolled in the program. Participation in Oportunidades was associated with a 10% decrement in aggressive/oppositional symptoms but was not associated with significant decrements in anxiety/depressive symptoms or total problem behaviors while controlling for covariates. Effects of treatment did not differ by children's gender or ethnicity. Although this large-scale conditional cash transfer program for poor Mexican families did not directly address children's behavior problems, it found evidence of indirect effects on children's behavior. Results suggest that interventions that focus on investing in basic human capital needs may exert longer term ripple effects on children's development.