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Impact of condtional cash transfers on children's school achievement: evidence from Colombia
Abstract
Conditional cash transfer programmes have expanded in developing countries as a way to foster human capital accumulation. Despite evidence of these programmes' positive impact on school enrolment, little is known about their impact on school achievement. This study estimated the effect of Familias en Accion on school achievement. It found that the programme has a positive effect on school achievement for children aged seven to 12 living in rural areas. However, the study found a negative effect on the school achievement of adolescents, particularly those living in rural areas. Possible mechanisms of these effects are explored and discussed.
... Since the 1990s, Latin American countries have also implemented direct income transfer programs. In this context, Garcia and Hill (2010) investigated the effects of these types of programs on student academic performance in Peru. They used the propensity score matching method to estimate the impact of the program on academic performance. ...
... The existing consensus in this type of study is that cash transfer programs affect enrollment rates and school attendance (Rawlings and Rubio, 2005;García and Saavedra, 2017). On the other hand, it is possible to say that there is no consensus regarding the impact of these programs on school performance, since, while some research finds positive impacts (Garcia and Hill, 2010), there are studies that do not find significant effects (Baird et al, 2014;Snilstveit, 2015). In this sense, this research joins a small group of research in which a positive effect on academic performance in Portuguese and mathematics is observed 8 . ...
The primary objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the Cartão Mais Infância Ceará (CMIC) program on students’ school performance in the Portuguese and Mathematics exams of the Permanent Assessment System for Basic Education in Ceará (SPAECE). The analysis focuses on students from families benefiting from the program between the years 2018 and 2019. The method employed is the difference-in-differences model, coupled with the propensity score approach following the design proposed by Blundell and Dias (2009), which is suitable for repeated cross-sections data structures. The findings reveal that being part of a CMIC family is, on average, associated with a performance improvement of approximately 11.63% and 11.52% in the SPAECE Portuguese and Mathematics exams, respectively, compared to students from non-participating families.
... Since the 1990s, Latin American countries have also implemented direct income transfer programs. In this context, Garcia and Hill (2010) investigated the effects of these types of programs on student academic performance in Peru. They used the propensity score matching method to estimate the impact of the program on academic performance. ...
... The existing consensus in this type of study is that cash transfer programs affect enrollment rates and school attendance (Rawlings and Rubio, 2005;García and Saavedra, 2017). On the other hand, it is possible to say that there is no consensus regarding the impact of these programs on school performance, since, while some research finds positive impacts (Garcia and Hill, 2010), there are studies that do not find significant effects (Baird et al, 2014;Snilstveit, 2015). In this sense, this research joins a small group of research in which a positive effect on academic performance in Portuguese and mathematics is observed 8 . ...
The primary objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the Cartão Mais Infância Ceará (CMIC) program on students' school performance in the Portuguese and Mathematics exams of the Permanent Assessment System for Basic Education in Ceará (SPAECE). The analysis focuses on students from families benefiting from the program between the years 2018 and 2019. The method employed is the difference-indifferences model, coupled with the propensity score approach following the design proposed by Blundell and Dias (2009), which is suitable for repeated cross-sections data structures. The findings reveal that being part of a CMIC family is, on average, associated with a performance improvement of approximately 11.63% and 11.52% in the SPAECE Portuguese and Mathematics exams, respectively, compared to students from non-participating families. Avaliação de impacto do programa Cartão Mais Infância Ceará sobre a performance escolar Resumo Este artigo tem o objetivo de avaliar o impacto do programa Cartão Mais Infância Ceará (CMIC) no desempenho escolar, nos exames do Sistema Permanente de Avaliação da Ed-ucação Básica do Ceará (SPAECE) de português e matemática de alunos pertencentes a famílias beneficiárias desse programa entre os anos de 2018 e 2019. Para tanto, utiliza-se o método de Diferenças-em-Diferenças em conjunto com o escore de propensão nos moldes propostos por Blundell e Dias (2009), adequado para estruturas de dados de cross-sections repetidos. Os resultados indicam que pertencer a uma família beneficiária do CMIC está associado, em média, a um desempenho aproximadamente de 11,63% e 11,52% maior nos exames SPAECE de português e matemática, respectivamente, em relação aos alunos que não pertencem a famílias atingidas pelo programa. Palavras-chave Educação; Desempenho escolar; Transferência de renda; Avaliação de impacto. Classificação JEL I20, D04, E64.
... Según Díaz et al., 2009;Garcia y Hill, 2009;Perova, 2010;Perova y Vakis, 2010Skoufias y Parker, 2001;Stampini et al., 2016;Teles et al., 2014, señalan que recibir enseñanza de algún centro o programa de estudios tiene un efecto positivo en el logro escolar para niños y aumenta en general en el logro educativo. En el caso de Colombia los niños de hogares pobres que se beneficiaron hasta nueve años del programa Familias en Acción, obtuvieron más estudios y mejores resultados en exámenes académicos en el final de la escuela secundaria (Baez y Camacho, 2011). ...
... Pero en lo que no concuerdan con el presente estudio es que existe un leve efecto negativo en el logro escolar de los adolescentes, particularmente en zonas rurales de Colombia (Garcia y Hill, 2009). ...
El presente trabajo de investigación se realizó con el objetivo de determinar el impacto del programa Juntos sobre el gasto en educación en el sector rural de la sierra y selva del Perú: 2016 - 2017, con información de la base de datos del Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI) de la Encuesta Nacional de Hogares. Se utilizó el método hipotético - deductivo. La forma funcional del modelo para el objetivo 1 se estimó a través del modelo Doble Diferencia con Propensity Score Matching, modelo que consiste en comparar el valor de la variable de interés antes y después de la intervención, no solo para el grupo poblacional beneficiario o grupo de tratamiento sino también para el grupo poblacional no beneficiario o de control, y la forma funcional del modelo para el objetivo 2 se estimó a través de máxima verosimilitud, el mismo que resuelve problema en datos de corte transversal. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que el programa Juntos si tiene un impacto positivo sobre el gasto per cápita mensual en educación en 22.99%, para aquellos hogares rurales en pobreza y extrema pobreza. Finalmente, el efecto de recibir enseñanza de algún centro o programa de estudios cuya duración sea menor a 3 años en la aprobación del estudiante en la escuela o colegio en el sector rural de la sierra y selva del Perú es del 2.42% y es significativo al 1%.
... This, in turn, may alter the relative measurements obtained on relevant variables from the beneficiary and non-beneficiary groups. Garcia and Hill (2009) Lavinas (2001) respectively that studies in Mexico and Brazil have compared grade retention rates and test scores between CCT beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Results show that for those age groups for which there are enrolment effects, the beneficiary group achievement is lower than non-beneficiary group achievement. ...
... Benhassine, Devoto, Duflo, & Dupas, (2010) and Garcia & Hill (2009) disclose that Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (CCTs) have been shown to influence households' investment decisions regarding education and increase students' school attendance. One potential drawback of CCTs is sending children to school to receive the transfer. ...
... They conclude that conditional cash transfer programmes can have impacts that go beyond the usual impacts on consumption, and health and education outcomes. Garcia and Hill (2010) estimated impact of conditional cash transfers (Familias en Accion) on children's school achievement in Colombia. The programme has a positive effect on school achievement for children aged seven to 12 living in rural areas. ...
... Maluccio and Flores (2004) found that average effects of RPS on educational expenditures were significant, for example, in 2002 the effect was about C$320, slightly larger than in 2001 (C$275) in Nicaragua. Garcia and Hill, (2010) found significant positive effects of Familias en Accion on school enrolment in Colombia. School enrollment for urban and rural adolescents (13-17 years old) was increased by 4.6 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. ...
... La diferencia es resultado de la extraedad, que, a su vez, está explicada por la entrada tardía de estudiantes al sistema escolar y por las altas tasas de repetición en los distintos grados. Los datos básicos sobre repitencia en el país se encuentran en Sarmiento (2006) y un análisis completo sobre el problema y los factores asociados en García et al. (2010). Usando datos de 1996 de al 2002 de Sarmiento (2006 muestra que la tasa de repetición promedio en el país en el sector oficial es considerablemente más alta que la del sector no oficial y que en el sector oficial la mayor deserción se presenta en primero y sexto grados. ...
... sis completo sobre el problema y los factores asociados en García et al. (2010). Usando datos de 1996 de al 2002 de Sarmiento (2006 muestra que la tasa de repetición promedio en el país en el sector oficial es considerablemente más alta que la del sector no oficial y que en el sector oficial la mayor deserción se presenta en primero y sexto grados. García et al. (2010) hacen un análisis de las variables correlacionadas con la repitencia y muestran que la extraedad y la repetición son riesgos importantes para la deserción. ...
... For instance, some studies indicate that cash transfers have a positive impact of various education outcomes, such as school enrolment, attendance, completion, academic performance and education participation rates (see, e.g., Baird et al., 2013;Dearden et al., 2009;Evans et al., 2020;Mostert & Castello, 2020;Peruffo & Ferreira, 2017;Saavedra & García, 2012;Tirivayi et al., 2016;Tirivayi et al., 2021). On the contrary, other studies find cash transfers failing to enhance education outcomes (see, e.g., Awaworyi Churchill et al., 2021;Camilo & Zuluaga, 2022;Draeger, 2021;Ferré & Sharif, 2014;Garcia & Hill, 2010). ...
... The program aims to breakdown the cry of the poorest of the poor to have children aged 0-18 healthy and in school so that they will have a bright future. As cited by Garcia & Hill (2016) Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) is one of the social assistance programs in education by the government that operates more than twice the number in 2008 (World Bank, 2014, p. 16). ...
This study predicts the spread of the new government program to be availed by out of school youths whose households are beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) using the Bass Diffusion Model. The model predicts the time and magnitude of newly released products and services. The diffusion of innovations (DoI) paradigm is a way of studying the spread of a new product and services that will be adopted over time by the first adapters, then subsequent imitators and adapters that could be accommodated within the program. This model is applied to the spread of the information of the government Tertiary Education Subsidy program on the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) among the Filipino youth with a target of spreading the information to out of school youths. The cash transfer allows a beneficiary to enroll in tertiary education with allowance and free tuition fees. The enrolment for the first semester for five years (CY 2014-2018) was obtained from the quarterly reports of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and was applied in the Bass forecasting spreadsheet. Cumulative diffusion and saturation point were categorically determined by the CCT beneficiaries from the initial adapters, imitators, and the potential imitators. Findings revealed that there was a slow diffusion at the early stage of CCT beneficiaries in tertiary education. However, the forecast revealed that almost one million of the beneficiaries could benefit from the program after 30 years. It will take four years for students to finish their higher education degree before they can be considered part of the working force. Significantly, short-term course offerings that are skill-based may be offered to students to acquire knowledge, expertise in the tools, equipment, or technology and materials used and interactions they need to get a job thus, earning wages to help the family earn a living.
... En el análisis a los programas anteriores se determinó que a pesar de los logros obtenidos en su aplicación, especialmente en las dimensiones de salud, logrando aumento en la demanda de servicios, mejora en las condiciones nutricionales de los niños y en la mejora en el uso de anticonceptivos (Gaarder, Glassman, & Todd, 2010), (Lamadrid-Figueroa, y otros, 2010), (Leroy, Ruel, & Verhofstadt, 2009); y en educación, logrando la reducción del trabajo infantil y el incremento de la asistencia escolar de los niños (Garcia & Hill, 2010), (Skoufias & Parker, 2001), los programas de TMC aún tienen grandes desafíos relacionados con la sostenibilidad de los programas y sus impactos a largo plazo, es decir, el logro de capacidades para romper con los círculos o trampas de pobreza sostenidas en el tiempo, además de la focalización de beneficiarios que garantice la inclusión de la población con privaciones según su grupo etario y condiciones particulares. Cortínez et al. (2016) sugieren que frente a los anteriores retos la coordinación y articulación institucional es vital y resaltan como buenas prácticas de experiencias estudiadas la voluntad y respaldo político de alto nivel, los sistemas de información unificados e integrales, los mecanismos de articulación vía presupuesto, rol central al actor local, articulación y ajuste entre criterios de focalización. ...
El desarrollo humano es un tema cada vez más prioritario en el abordaje de los problemas sociales en todo el mundo, cuya complejidad ha dado nacimiento a diferentes intervenciones desde los gobiernos, tal como los programas de transferencias monetarias condicionadas, que en América Latina han tenido un rol protagónico en la disminución de la pobreza. En este artículo se aborda el análisis de estos programas desde los impactos generados y su relación con el grado de inversión que en distintos países se evidencia para los mismos, además de abordar los aportes de cada uno sobre los resultados deseables frente al desarrollo humano, incluyendo el caso colombiano de Familias en Acción. Mediante la revisión bibliográfica y la consulta de fuente secundarias, se identifican los impactos positivos, aspectos a mejorar y temas no abordados de estos programas como punto de partida para su mejoramiento desde la política y administración pública.
... Examples of truncation by death in practice are ubiquitous: in clinical studies, when the outcome is quality-of-life index one year after initiating treatment for a terminal disease, but some study participants die earlier (Ding et al., 2011;Ding and Lu, 2017); in labor economics, when studying the effect of a training program on salaries, but some remain unemployed (in this example, unemployment is the analogue of death) (Lee, 2009; arXiv:2110.10186v1 [stat.ME] 19 Oct 2021 Zhang et al., 2009); in education studies, different school programs are evaluated with respect to students' achievements, but some students may drop out (Garcia Jaramillo and Hill, 2010). ...
Even in a carefully designed randomized trial, outcomes for some study participants can be missing, or more precisely, ill-defined, because participants had died prior to date of outcome collection. This problem, known as truncation by death, means that the treated and untreated are no longer balanced with respect to covariates determining survival. To overcome this problem, researchers often utilize principal stratification and focus on the Survivor Average Causal Effect (SACE). The SACE is the average causal effect among the subpopulation that will survive regardless of treatment status. In this paper, we present a new approach based on matching for SACE identification and estimation. We provide an identification result for the SACE that motivates the use of matching to restore the balance among the survivors. We discuss various practical issues, including the choice of distance measures, possibility of matching with replacement, post-matching crude and model-based SACE estimators, and non-parametric tests. Our simulation results demonstrate the flexibility and advantages of our approach. Because the cross-world assumptions needed for SACE identification can be too strong and are unfalsifiable, we also present sensitivity analysis techniques and illustrate their use in real data analysis. Finally, a recent alternative for SACE that does not demand cross-world unfalsifiable assumptions targets the conditional separable effects. We show how our approach can also be utilized to estimate these causal effects.
... Their findings are consistent with the existence of credit constraints inhibiting such transitions in the absence of the program. Garcia and Hill (2010) estimated the impact of conditional cash transfers (Familias en Accion) on children's school achievement in Colombia. The program has a positive effect on school achievement for children aged seven to 12 living in rural areas. ...
This study estimates the productive impacts of four important social safety net programs in Bangladesh. Two are cash transfer programs called old age allowance (OAA) and allowances for the widowed, deserted, and destitute (AWDD) providing cash income support to targeted beneficiaries. The other two are conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs called stipend for primary education (SPE) and stipend for secondary and higher secondary education for female students (SSHE) providing cash support by imposing conditionalities and hence are CCT programs. We measure productive impacts on the beneficiary households using labor allocation, income generating activities, investments in land, durable goods, human capital and coping mechanisms as indicators. We use the HIES 2010 data and the propensity score matching method to estimate impacts. The beneficiaries under OAA, AWDD, SPE and SSHE numbered 485, 203, 444 and 176, respectively. Results show that both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs had moderate productive impacts, but the impacts were statistically significant only in the case of CCT programs. The average treatment effect on treated (ATT) in SPE was significant for self-employed in off-farm activities, expenditure on durable goods, total credit and non-food expenditure. ATT in SSHE was significant for self-employed in farm activities, income from crop production, income from livestock production, spending on fertilizer use, total credit and education expenditure. This indicates that the SPE and the SSHE contribute to some productive outcome indicators. Policy makers should design programs taking account of not only the goal of protection but also to the impact on productive capacity.
... Another program in Mexico named Programa Nacional de Educacion, Salud y Alimentacion or PROGRESA (now known as Oportunidades) improved the enrolment rate among poor children (Schultz, 2004). A study by Garcia and Hill (2010) concludes that a cash transfer program in Colombia, Familias en Acción, has improved school attainment for 7 to 12 years' students in rural areas of Colombia. Another study by Glewwe and Olinto (2004) shows that The Programa de Asignacion Familiar (PRAF) II, a cash transfer program, has decreases the dropout rate in Honduras. ...
Indonesia is committed to education but the Government of Indonesia still struggle with dropout problem at upper secondary school level, especially students from rural areas who dropping out of school before graduating. The dropout events can be explained through the demand for education. In 2008 Government of Indonesia introduced Bantuan Siswa Miskin program, the Cash Transfers for Poor Students (recently is known as Kartu Indonesia Pintar), in order to reduce numbers of dropouts. The program is mainly to cover students’ indirect costs and is implicitly used to increase students’ demand for education. The objective of this study is to get better understanding on the impact of government’s cash transfers on rural students’ dropout at upper secondary schools in Central Java Province. Primary data was collected from rural areas in all regencies and cities. The likelihood to drop out is estimated using Probit regressions. There are two main findings in this study. First, the result shows that higher education expenditure is significantly increasing the probability of rural students to drop out. Second, it is evidence that government’s cash transfers significantly diminish the rural students’ likelihood of dropping out. Based on the findings, it is suggested the Government of Indonesia must reduce education costs and the government also should expand the number of cash transfers for poor rural students.
... One possibility is that the children who enter school because of the programs are disadvantaged students who do not progress so easily. Results from conditional cash transfer programs in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico confirm that school achievement is lower among age-groups among which there are enrollment effects (Behrman, Sengupta, and Todd 2000;de Janvry et al. 2006;Garcia and Hill 2010). Beyond student selection, the study locations are extremely poor, and school quality is low; so simply sending children to school may not necessarily raise achievement in this context. ...
Cash transfer programs are rapidly becoming a key component of the social safety net of many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The primary aim of these programs is to help households improve their food security and to smooth consumption during periods of economic duress. However, beneficiary households have also been shown to use these programs to expand their microentrepreneurial activities. Cluster-randomized trials carried out during the rollout of large-scale programs in Malawi and Zambia show that children may increase their work in the household enterprise through such programs. Both programs increased forms of work that may be detrimental to children, such as activities that expose children to hazards in Malawi and excessive working hours in Zambia. However, both programs also induced positive changes in other child well-being domains, such as school attendance and material well-being, leading to a mixed and inconclusive picture of the implications of these programs for children.
... Evaluations on the impacts of CCT on learning outcomes are somehow mixed and limited, causing it to become difficult to deduce inferences (Behrman & Parker 2000;Garcia & Hill 2009). Improvements in test scores attributed to CCTs are mainly observed for kids in primary school. ...
An essay made for the Final Research Paper of IDEC8026 - Quantitative Policy Impact Evaluation subject. Score: 80 / 100
... Con respecto a los resultados del programa desagregado por zona, el hecho de que los efectos sobre la razón de estudiantes a docentes en secundaria sea mayor en el sector rural es consistente con los resultados encontrados en trabajos como el de García y Hill (2010), que muestra que el efecto sobre la inscripción escolar es mayor para este grupo de edad y zona. Como se mencionó, en la zona urbana también se evidencia un ligero aumento en la razón de estudiantes a docentes en este nivel, pero este parece derivarse también de una disminución en el número de docentes. ...
El programa de Familias en Acción (FA), al igual que otras políticas de transferencias condicionadas en diversos países, ha mostrado tener efectos significativos y positivos en el uso de servicios de educación y salud; sin embargo, los resultados sobre logro escolar han sido menos claros. Este estudio busca evaluar, para el caso colombiano, cómo se han ajustado los factores de oferta educativa al programa, lo cual puede ser una explicación del escaso avance en materia de logro escolar asociado a la implementación de Familias en Acción. En particular, mediante una estimación por diferencias en diferencias emparejadas, se evalúa el impacto del programa sobre variables como la oferta de instituciones educativas por jornada y nivel educativo, la congestión y los recursos humanos. Los resultados demuestran que en los municipios donde se implementó Familias en Acción el equilibrio en el mercado educativo se ha deteriorado, pues no ha habido una respuesta de inversión en el componente de la oferta. Estos resultados sugieren que la relación entre los programas de transferencias condicionadas y las condiciones de oferta debe analizarse con mayor profundidad para lograr mejoras en la formación de capital humano.
... Rigorous evidence from an early conditional HCD cash transfer program in Mexico, PROGRESA, has been the basis for the adoption of this type of social program in many countries (Bourguignon et al., 2006;Skoufias & Parker, 2001). Most HCD cash transfer programs have a strong focus on improving health and schooling, and evaluations have shown that these programs generally increase the use of relevant public services (e.g., preventative health services, primary and secondary schooling) (Adato & Hoddinott, 2009;Akresh, de Walque, & Kazianga, 2013, 2016Baird, Ferreira, Oezler, & Woolcock, 2014;Baird et al., 2011;de Brauw & Hoddinott, 2011;Garcia & Hill, 2010;Lomelí, 2008;Maluccio, Murphy, & Regalia, 2010;Robertson et al., 2013;Schady & Araujo, 2008). Many studies have documented positive human capital outcomes (e.g., higher wages, better child health, poverty reduction) resulting from the increased use of public services (e.g., Adato et al., 2011;Barber & Gertler, 2010;Soares, Ribas, & Hirata, 2010), while others have argued that the increased use of public services may not necessarily lead to enhanced human capital (Bradshaw, 2008;Cookson, 2016;Delgado, 2013;Forde, Bell, & Marmot, 2011;Lomelí, 2008;Molyneux, 2006). ...
Over the past 30 years, direct transfers to beneficiaries have become an increasingly important tool for addressing society’s need for effective, efficient, and equitable conservation and development, and have been widely used to generate socially desirable outcomes in human capital development (HCD) programs and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs. Yet, the two types of programs have been examined in distinct bodies of literature without much reference to each other. By systematically reviewing peer-reviewed journal articles, dissertations, and select working papers, we suggest important similarities and differences between HCD cash transfer and PES programs that have been overlooked, particularly in how direct transfers are conceptualized and operationalized and how intended and unintended program outcomes are produced. Rather than considering HCD cash transfers and PES as two distinct tools, a common framework that conceptualizes direct transfers as an umbrella mechanism to produce socially desirable outcomes can contribute to effectively engaging target populations, addressing the needs of beneficiaries in a holistic way, comprehensively evaluating program impacts, and enabling opportunities to build synergies and minimize redundancies and competition across programs. We conclude by offering five insights into future research, program development, and policy innovations. Specifically, PES programs can learn from HCD cash transfer programs to (1) incorporate considerations of economic and gender inequalities to better sustain long-term environmental outcomes; (2) enhance collaboration among PES scholars, program practitioners, and policy makers to improve PES design and implementation and minimize adverse unintended impacts; (3) use randomized control trials to measure the causal impacts of PES; and (4) reconsider the role of conditionality to promote simultaneous production of environmental, economic, and social benefits. HCD cash transfer programs can learn from PES programs to (5) explore collaborative, community-based program design and implementation to facilitate not only adoption of socially desirable behaviors but also long-term human capital gains.
... Familias en Acción has had positive effects on school enrolment and attendance, especially in rural areas and among 12 to 17-year-olds (Attanasio et al., 2005). Its impact on cognitive achievement and graduation rates, however, is less clear (García and Hill, 2010;Báez and Camacho, 2011). To improve incentives, the government launched pilot programmes making transfers conditional on graduation and tertiary enrolment, with positive impacts on attendance and enrolment at secondary and tertiary levels (Barrera et al., 2011). ...
Income inequality in Colombia has declined since the early 2000s but remains very high by international standards. While most of the inequality originates from the labour market, wealth – and thus capital income – is also highly concentrated and the tax and transfer system has little redistributive impact. The tax-to-GDP ratio remains low. Consumption taxes, which tend to be regressive, account for the bulk. The progressivity of income taxes had been undermined by generous tax reliefs, which benefit the well-off most and increase tax avoidance opportunities. The tax system should be reformed to enhance progressivity and raise more revenue which could be used to expand social policies. Cash transfers to households are small and dominated by non-redistributive schemes such as contributory pensions. Education coverage has increased steadily but quality and equity in access at the tertiary level remain important issues. Though significant progress has been made towards universal health coverage, the financing and organisation of the health care system could be improved to raise the quality of care and reduce adverse incentives to remain in the informal sector.
... Skoufias, 2005;Attanasio et al., 2006). While there is a general consensus across studies about the positive effects on enrolment, there is relatively less consistency in the evidence on children's performance in schools (Garcia and Hill, 2010). Barham et al. (2013) find that even the short-term impacts on enrolment achieved by a 3-year CCT could result in significant difference in learning outcomes after 10 years. ...
Access to education is usually found to be highly correlated with household income and wealth. This correlation often instigates an expectation that increasing income of the poor households will lead to greater human capital accumulation. This paper exploits randomized roll-out of a large-scale livelihood development programme for the ultra-poor in Bangladesh to measure the effect of asset transfer and livelihood supports on children’s schooling. We find limited impact on enrolment although this programme has been extremely successful in transforming the economic lives of the ultra-poor and causing substantial increases in their income and productive assets. The beneficiary households are also found to have increased their expenditures on education. This increase in educational investment, however, has not affected educational attainment during the evaluation period. We also find that the programme increased the extent of child labour immediately after asset transfers. The level of this impact on children’s work declines two years after the interventions ended. The increases in child labour are concentrated in activities related to livestock rearing, which is the primary type of asset transferred in this programme. However, we do not find evidence indicating a trade-off between children’s enrolment and work. The evidence suggests that asset transfer programmes can be more effective by including additional components focusing on improvement in educational outcomes instead of relying primarily on spillover effects through income gain.
... While there is a general consensus across studies on the positive effects of CCTs on school enrolment, there is less consistency in the evidence on children's performance in schools (Garcia and Hill, 2010). Our evidence shows that the ultra-poor program had zero or negative effect on performance in schools, measured by the likelihood of repeating grades. ...
My thesis comprises of three stand‐alone papers, which are connected by the theme of social protection
and human capital accumulation. In the first paper, using experimental data from South Sudan, I focus on
evaluating the effects of food transfer on household labour supply decisions and crowding‐out of informal
private transfers. I do not observe significant impact on either of these two domains, except reduction in
child labour. This effect corresponds with increased school enrolment of children. I find that positive
income shocks from short‐term food transfers induced the households to invest in durable goods, and child
‘non‐work’ is a luxury good for the ultra‐poor. The second paper evaluates the effects of a policy related to
exam standard on labour market performance of secondary school graduates in Bangladesh. Using a
natural experiment, the paper shows that lowering standard reduced labour market returns for the
graduates. General equilibrium effects of increased supply of graduates and lower human capital
accumulation due to lower standard have been identified as possible mechanisms underlying this labour
market effect. In my third paper, I evaluate the effects of an asset transfer programme for the ultra‐poor in
Bangladesh on children’s enrolment. I find that despite exceptionally large positive impact on household
income, asset transfer did not increase enrolment rates. Moreover, there was increased demand for child
labour in these households. The evidence suggests that asset transfer may not be sufficient to increase
school enrolment among households in extreme poverty and may have unintended effects on child labor.
... However, as with other CCT programs, there is little evidence on learning. Few studies show that FAP has very small (or none) impacts on test scores (Báez & Camacho, 2011;García & Hill, 2010). ...
One of the main challenges for the post-2015 agenda is to reach universal primary education for all children. The last decade experienced a boom of social protection programs aimed at increasing school enrollment, mostly in the form of Conditional Cash Transfers. These programs are mostly targeted to poor families and have proved to increase enrollment and attendance. However, not all vulnerable children are benefiting from these programs. As more children are to be reached, there is a higher risk to incur in inclusion errors. This paper discusses the main challenges of targeting this type of programs and draws some lessons for improving targeting effectiveness. It also highlights the importance of moving from enrollment and attendance to learning and attainment as we move forward towards reaching high education quality for all children.
... Con respecto a los resultados del programa desagregado por zona, el hecho de que los efectos sobre la razón de estudiantes a docentes en secundaria sea mayor en el sector rural es consistente con los resultados encontrados en trabajos como el de García y Hill (2010), que muestra que el efecto sobre la inscripción escolar es mayor para este grupo de edad y zona. Como se mencionó, en la zona urbana también se evidencia un ligero aumento en la razón de estudiantes a docentes en este nivel, pero este parece derivarse también de una disminución en el número de docentes. ...
Familias en Acción has had a positive impact on the use of educational and health services; nonetheless the results on educational achievement are less clear. This study evaluates the way in which the educational supply has adjusted to the implementation of the program, which can be an explanation for the scarce advance on this regard. Through a difference-in-differences matching estimator I evaluate the impact of the program on the supply of educational institutions according to the school hours and educational level they offer, congestion and human resources. The results indicate that the educational equilibrium in the treated municipalities has deteriorated because there has not been a corresponding investment in educational supply. The relation between Conditional Cash Transfers and supply conditions should be analyzed with greater depth in order to achieve advances in human capital formation.
... Additionally, children spent less time on household chores that before the implementation of the program. Garcia and Hill (2010) are using data from Familias en Acción as well, but they focus on school achievement and retention rates instead of enrolment. They find that the subsidy has a positive impact on school achievement of children aged 7-12 living in rural areas but a negative effect of achievement of teenagers. ...
Recently, Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (CCT) became increasingly popular in developing countries due to their positive outcomes on health and education. In this paper, we are particularly interested in testing if children participating in CCT (treated) in conflict affected regions benefit more (or less) than their counterparts in peaceful areas. To test this, we combine longitudinal CCT data from Colombia with a conflict event dataset. This allows us to use standard techniques in treatment evaluation, but it augments the testing equations by adding interactions between dummies identifying different groups and indicators of violence. We find that the CCT program had an extra benefit in conflict areas concerning enrolment. However, grade progression is similar for treated children in low and high conflict regions. Results suggest that the program may work in attracting children to school, but in high conflict regions children tend to do less homework and miss more days in school. --
... For instance, Colombia's CCT program, Familias en Acciόn, provides a cash subsidy to low-income households with children aged 7-17 on the condition that the child is enrolled in school and attends class at least 80 per cent of the time. By calculating difference-in-difference estimates, Garcia and Hill (2010) per cent for older children, while the overall enrolment rate in urban areas was 88 per cent, compared to 75 per cent in rural areas. Meanwhile, Mexico's primary school enrolment rates before Opportunidades were between 90 and 94 per cent for both boys and girls. ...
For countries assessing whether to implement a cash transfer program, an ex-ante evaluation is vital to assess its potential impacts. This study simulates the impact of alternative cash transfer programs on school attendance and poverty among Sri Lankan children. We find that cash transfer programs targeting poor children would be the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty and encourage school attendance. If means-testing is not feasible, then programs targeting the children in households with at least three school-age children would provide a suitable second-best solution. Our findings suggest that even a limited program budget can provide significant impacts.
With an increasing shift towards cash transfers and the proposition of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a policy alternative to replace the existing schemes, there has been a rising discussion about the success and failure associated with cash transfers. Therefore, this article carries out a systematic review using PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis) to draw inferences and generate evidences with respect to the influence of cash transfers on two aspects of human capital outcomes of children, viz., child health and nutrition, and educational outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Forty four studies were selected on the basis of a four-stage procedure that checked for identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion. The results indicate that majority of cash transfers based on conditionalities, like mandatory attendance in healthcare organisations and educational institutions, proved to be effective in the selected countries. While 7 studies (16%) showed no changes in the outcomes, 5 (11%) depicted negative impact and the rest (73%) presented a positive result. The selected studies suggest that a strong supply-side mechanism in place in LMICs, ensure functional and quality services at health centres and schools in the respective regions and reflect overwhelming outcomes. Furthermore, incentive design, anticipated termination, and supply-side interventions would be instrumental in avoiding a crisis or shock in the economic sense to recipient households.
En México, uno de los programas más emblemáticos dirigidos a la reducción de la pobreza de los últimos años es el Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP). La creación del POP respondió a la necesidad de contar con apoyos sociales focalizados a las familias en pobreza extrema ante la difícil situación de las finanzas públicas derivada de la crisis del petróleo en la década de los 80 sumado a la crisis económica de 1994-1995; ante la expectativa de cambios estructurales que generarían crecimiento económico y mayor empleo, el programa se planteaba como un instrumento para fortalecer las capacidades de los individuos más pobres para que, a su vez, estos pudieran acceder a los beneficios del crecimiento esperado.
En este sentido, con el objetivo de valorar la experiencia de esta intervención e identificar lecciones aprendidas que ayuden a mejorar el proceso de reconfiguración de la política social del país, el CONEVAL, en colaboración con el PUED-UNAM llevaron a cabo entre 2017 y 2019 el proyecto “El Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera, a 20 años de su creación”. Este libro es el producto final de este proyecto y está conformado por un conjunto de capítulos temáticos elaborados por autores con contribuciones destacadas en el POP, así como funcionarios públicos o académicos con un conocimiento profundo del programa a partir de su investigación académica.
En los últimos 18 años, Colombia ha reducido modestamente la desigualdad de ingresos medida con el índice de Gini frente a otros países latinoamericanos. Pero cuando se observa el conjunto de sus ciudades saltan a la vista trayectorias diversas: unas han reducido notablemente, mientras que en otras hay estancamiento. Este artículo se enfoca en 4 ciudades colombianas con trayectorias divergentes en la evolución de la desigualdad. A través de un análisis de la distribución del ingreso, a partir de datos de la Encuesta Continua de Hogares (2002-2005) y la Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares (2008-2018), este artículo se centra en el papel de los ingresos por pensiones y por ayudas en la variación del Gini, y utiliza registros administrativos para robustecer los análisis propuestos. Dentro de los resultados se destaca el diferenciado rol de las ayudas en la reducción de la desigualdad, y el de las pensiones en su aumento.
El objetivo de este capítulo es analizar el papel del programa de transferencias monetarias condicionadas Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) en el régimen de bienestar mexicano y, en especial, en la acción de bienestar por parte del Estado articulada en el sistema de protección social. En el marco de la constelación de regímenes de bienestar de América Latina, se discuten primero los antecedentes de POP en el régimen de bienestar dual de México, después el rol de este programa en el régimen de bienestar modificado con las reformas sociales de los años 90 y 2000, y por último las posibles transformaciones de POP.
In this paper we provide a rigorous review of evaluations of education programmes in developing countries. This review is organised to provide guidance to policy‐makers by identifying education interventions that are effective, sometimes effective, and not effective and by presenting some information on the cost effectiveness of different types of interventions. We distinguish between interventions' impacts on two types of outcomes: time in schools and learning as measured by test scores. Regarding children's time in school, we find that there are two effective, but admittedly relatively expensive, ways to increase enrolment and attendance: (1) Providing cash transfers conditional on attendance; and (2) Building new schools in communities where schools either do not exist or are far away. We have identified four interventions that have been shown to be effective at increasing test scores: (1) Merit‐based student scholarships; (2) Teaching at the right level; (3) Decreasing pupil–teacher ratios; and (4) Building new schools.
Resumen: En este documento se describe la calidad educativa, los objetivos sociales que genera y nos muestra los aspectos generales que en ella se fundamentan. Observaremos los factores claves que se deben tener en cuenta al momento de contemplar un concepto de calidad educativa y en el podemos afirmar que la estandarización de calidad educativa a nivel de América Latina es algo imposible ya que cada país la dirige a su conveniencia ya sea para fines políticos o económicos. Abstract: This document describes the educational quality, the social objectives that it generates and shows us the general aspects that are based on it. We will observe the key factors that must be taken into account when contemplating a concept of educational quality and in which we can affirm that the standardization of educational quality in Latin America is something impossible since each country directs it at its convenience either for political or economic purposes. La importancia de la calidad educativa se fundamenta en la diversidad de objetivos sociales que genera, la educación no solo garantiza una participación activa en la sociedad, sino que también reduce los niveles de pobreza, permite aumentos salariales y generando mayores niveles de crecimiento social. Estudios muestran que la educación no solo es un factor de crecimiento individual, sino que es considerada como pilar del desarrollo económico de una sociedad. F. Barrera, et al. (2012). Dado que esto ayuda a establecer o volver mas solida la economía de cualquier nación generando mayores incentivos para la creación de empresas, que sin lugar a duda permitirá a la población tener mas oportunidades de empleo, mejorando asi la calidad de vida de las personas. Para establecer un campo general de los factores que influyen en la eficacia y calidad educativa se podrían destacar aspectos como productos, procesos, insumos, ambiente escolar y obviamente los individuos involucrados en este contexto: no solo los estudiantes sino también profesores, padres de familia y directivos académicos, asi como el impacto que estos tienen directamente en los estudiantes mediante la institución, sus prácticas de enseñanza y los recursos disponibles para impartir las mismas. A. Mendoza et al. (2009). En tanto la calidad educativa se convierte en parte fundamental no solo del desarrollo personal, sino que hace parte del crecimiento social, cultural,
Drawing on data collected from 2008 to 2013 in a low-income Cairo neighborhood, this article examines the impact of a poverty alleviation program, a conditional cash transfer (CCT) that attempted to incentivize poor mothers, through a direct cash transfer, to send their children to school. The program met its goal. The mothers did send their children to school. I argue that only observing this outcome of school access, however, black-boxes the causal pathway of how mothers sent their children to school in the Egyptian context, and how the program mattered. Public schools in Egypt are free on paper but expensive in practice due to an informal system of “private lesson” and “study group” fees imposed by teachers. Mothers had always managed this expense, using scarce gendered household resources, before, during, and after the program. Through ethnographic, interview, and survey data, this article shows that while the cash—transferred to the mothers and labeled for education—enabled the mothers to send their children to school, the program conditions were unnecessary. The mothers did not need to be nudged to send their children to school. This Egyptian case study has implications for the use of behavioral incentives and for the importance of qualitative methods to the study of policy impacts.
This paper analyzes the impact of a large scale conditional cash transfer (CCT) program on the educational aspirations of parents and children in poor households. The program, in addition to providing cash subsidies to the poorest households, delivered information about the returns to education and encouraged interaction between beneficiaries, social leaders, and professionals. Using data from the quasi-experimental impact evaluation of the program and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find a positive impact for the CCT on educational aspirations for both children and parents. Particularly, parents and children were 10.9 and 20.2 percentage points more likely to aspire to attain post-secondary education due to exposition to the program, respectively. Furthermore, we find that the effect was larger for the most vulnerable households: the poorest, least educated, and most pessimistic. Based on the results, we discuss policy implications that could boost long-term educational impacts of similar programs.
Bangladesh has a comprehensive portfolio of social protection programs, fruits are yet to be reaped more effectively. However, the extent of their productive impacts is not yet analysed in great detail. The objective of this study is to estimate the productive impacts of cash transfer (old age allowance, allowances for the widowed, destitute and deserted women) and conditional cash transfer programs (stipend for primary students, secondary students and a combination of CFW, FFW, VGD, and 100 days employment scheme) in Bangladesh. The study used the HIES 2010 data. The study used PSM method. The outcome variables were i) labor allocation changes, ii) income generating activities, iii) investments in land, tools, animals, family enterprises, durable goods and housing, iv) investments in human capital, and v) coping mechanisms. Results show that different programs are producing different outcomes. So, policy makers should implement a number of interventions simultaneously to serve the needy.
This Campbell systematic review assesses the effects of conditional and unconditional cash transfer programmes on education outcomes in low‐ and middle‐income countries. The review summarizes findings from 35 studies.
Both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programmes increase enrolment compared to no program. But they have at best a small effect on learning outcomes, although the evidence base on learning is small.
Cash transfers have a larger effect on enrolment if there are conditions that are strictly monitored and enforced. Programs that are explicitly conditional, monitor compliance and penalize non‐compliance have substantively larger effects – increasing the odds of enrolment by 60% compared to less than 20% for programs with no conditions.
Executive summary
BACKGROUND
Increasing educational attainment around the world is one of the key aims of the Millennium Development Goals. Cash transfer programs, both conditional and unconditional, are a popular social protection tool in developing countries that aim, among other things, to improve education outcomes in developing countries. The debate over whether these programs should include conditions has been at the forefront of recent global policy discussions. This systematic review aims to complement the existing evidence on the effectiveness of these programs in improving schooling outcomes and help inform the debate surrounding the design of cash transfer programs.
OBJECTIVES
Our main objective was to assess the relative effectiveness of conditional and unconditional cash transfers in improving enrollment, attendance and test scores in developing countries. Our secondary objective was to understand the role of different dimensions of the cash transfer programs, particularly the role of the intensity of conditions and the effects of priming (with respect to the importance of children's schooling) in cash transfer programs.
SEARCH STRATEGY
Five main strategies were used to identify relevant reports: (1) Electronic searches of 37 international databases (concluded on 18 April 2012), (2) contacted researchers working in the area, (3) hand searched key journals, (4) reviewed websites of relevant organizations, and (5) given the year delay between the original search and the final edits of the review we updated our references with all new eligible references the study team was aware of as of 30 April 2013.
SELECTION CRITERIA
To be eligible for this review, studies had to either assess the impact of a conditional cash transfer program (CCT), with at least one condition explicitly related to schooling, or evaluate an unconditional cash transfer program (UCT). The report had to include at least one quantifiable measure of enrollment, attendance or test scores. The report had to be published after 1997, utilize a randomized control trial or a quasi‐experimental design, and take place in a developing country.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
A data extraction sheet was constructed to collect data on impacts and characteristics of the report and intervention. Enrollment and attendance were coded using odds ratios, while test scores were coded using standardized mean differences. Effect sizes were synthesized and summarized within and across reports to one effect size per outcome for each study. Given the heterogeneity of true effects in the population, analyses of effect sizes were estimated using random effects models. Moderator analysis was conducted with six additional variables.
RESULTS
The sample includes 75 reports, with data from 35 studies, including five UCTs, 26 CCTs, and four studies that directly compare CCTs to UCTs. Our findings suggest that both CCTs (Odds Ratio (OR) 1.41, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 1.27–1.56) and UCTs (OR 1.23, 95% CI 1.08–1.41) have a significant effect on enrollment. These results indicate that CCTs increase the odds of a child being enrolled in school by 41% and UCTs increase the odds by 23%. We do not find a significant difference when comparing CCTs to UCTs (OR 1.15, 95% CI 0.94–1.42].
The binary categorization of these programs into CCT vs. UCT ignores the fact that there is a great deal of variation in the intensity of the conditionality. If we instead group the conditionality variable into three broader categories (i) no schooling conditions (intensity=1 or 2), (ii) some schooling conditions with no enforcement or monitoring (intensity=3 or 4) and (iii) explicit schooling conditions monitored and enforced (intensity=5 or 6) we find odds ratios as follows: 1.18 (95% CI 1.05–1.33), 1.25 (95% CI 1.10–1.42), and 1.60 (95% 1.37–1.88), respectively. The 95% CI for studies with no conditions and studies with conditions monitored and enforced do not overlap. Meta‐regression indicates that outside of the intensity of the conditions imposed, none of the other measured design elements have a significant effect on moderating the overall effect size.
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
Our main finding is that both CCTs and UCTs improve the odds of being enrolled in and attending school compared to no cash transfer program. The effect sizes for enrollment and attendance are always larger for CCT programs compared to UCT programs but the difference is not significant. When programs are categorized as having no schooling conditions, having some conditions with minimal monitoring and enforcement, and having explicit conditions that are monitored and enforced, a much clearer pattern emerges. While interventions with no conditions or some conditions that are not monitored have some effect on enrollment rates (18–25% improvement in odds of being enrolled in school), programs that are explicitly conditional, monitor compliance and penalize non‐compliance have substantively larger effects (60% improvement in odds of enrollment). Unlike enrollment and attendance, the effectiveness of cash transfer programs on improving test scores is small at best. More research is needed that looks at longer term outcomes such as test scores, as well as on evaluating UCTs more generally.
Este artículo resume el trabajo Tras la excelencia docente: cómo mejorar la calidad de la educación para todos los colombianos, recientemente publicado y divulgado por la Fundación Compartir. Aprovecha la ocasión para responder a algunas de las críticas que aparecieron tras la publicación del estudio. En particular, el trabajo se ocupa de aclarar, explicar o corregir tres asuntos que surgieron tras la publicación del trabajo: asuntos metodológicos, la posición de los autores del estudio sobre el papel de los rectores en la calidad de la educación y sobre la importancia de una política pública sobre métodos pedagógicos.
This article examines a randomised intervention in Delhi, India, that provided unconditional cash transfers to a group of households as a replacement for the food security offered by a below-poverty-level card. The experimental approach can differentiate beneficial effects due to either unconditional cash transfers or newly opened bank accounts. The unconditional cash transfer does not induce a decline in food security; rather, it provides opportunities for households to shift to other nutritious options in non-cereal product categories.
In this paper, I investigate the extent to which secondary and higher education supply constraints affected aggregate educational attainment in Colombia for cohorts born between 1945 and 1981. As was the case in many other countries after World War II, in Colombia, industrialization, urbanization and rapid population growth increased the demand for education and the return to schooling. Although educational expenditures from the central government and the states increased after the 1950s, secondary and tertiary schools' per-pupil inputs declined. Using variation in cohort size within states and over time to proxy for changes in education demand, I find that for cohorts born after 1945, a 10% increase in cohort size reduced high school completion rate by 3%, the college completion rate by 4% and average years of schooling by 1%. Compared to women's educational attainment rates, changes in cohort size had greater negative effects on men's rates.
Familias en Acción ha impactado positivamente el uso de servicios de educación y salud; sin embargo, los resultados sobre logro escolar son menos claros. Este estudio evalúa cómo se han ajustado los factores de oferta educativa al programa, lo cual puede ser una explicación del escaso avance en esta materia. Mediante una estimación por diferencias en diferencias emparejadas se evalúa el impacto del programa sobre la oferta de instituciones educativas por jornada y nivel educativo, congestión y recursos humanos. Se encuentra que en los municipios tratados el equilibrio en el mercado educativo se ha deteriorado pues no ha habido una respuesta de inversión en el componente de oferta. La relación entre las transferencias condicionadas y las condiciones de oferta debe analizarse con mayor profundidad para lograr mejoras en la formación de capital humano.
As more resources are being allocated to impact evaluation of development programmes, the need to map out the utilisation and influence of evaluations has been increasingly highlighted. This paper aims at filling this gap by describing and discussing experiences from four large impact evaluations in Colombia on case- study basis. On the basis of learning from our prior experience in both managing and conducting impact evaluations, desk review of available documentation from the monitoring and evaluation system, and structured interviews with government actors, evaluators and programme managers, we benchmark each evaluation against 11 standards of quality. From this benchmarking exercise, we derive five key lessons for conducting high-quality and influential impact evaluations: investing in preparation of good terms of reference and identification of evaluation questions; choosing the best methodological approach to address the evaluation questions; adopting mechanisms to ensure evaluation quality; laying out the incentives for involved parties in order to foster evaluation buy-in; and carrying out a plan for quality dissemination.
In this paper we investigate whether a conditional cash transfer program such as the Programa Nacional de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA) can simultaneously combat the problems of low school attendance and child work. PROGRESA is a new program of the Mexican government aimed at alleviating extreme poverty in rural areas. It combats the different causes of poverty by providing cash benefits that are targeted directly to households on the condition of children attending school and visiting health clinics on a regular basis. Some of the questions addressed are as follows: Does the program reduce child labor? Does it increase participation in school activities? Does the latter occur at the expense of children's leisure time? And how do the effects of the program vary by age group and gender? Our empirical analysis relies on data from a quasi-experimental design used to evaluate the impact of the program involving a sample of communities that receive PROGRESA benefits (treatment) and comparable communities that receive benefits at a later time (control). We estimate the effect of “treatment on the treated” using both double-difference and cross sectional difference estimators. Our estimates show significant increases in the school attendance of boys and girls that are accompanied by significant reductions in the participation of boys and girls in work activities. We also find that the program has a lower impact on the incidence of work for girls relative to boys.
The Red de Protección Social (RPS) is a conditional cash program, modeled after PROGRESA, to reduce both current and future poverty via cash transfers to households living in extreme poverty in rural Nicaragua. This chapter examines the education-and child labor-related effects of the program, presenting results from a randomized community-based trial. The evidence demonstrates that RPS had a significant and substantial effect on schooling matriculation and enrollment during its first year of operation. Moreover, it led to a substantial reduction in child labor for the school age population.
The propensity score is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular treatment given a vector of observed covariates. Both large and small sample theory show that adjustment for the scalar propensity score is sufficient to remove bias due to all observed covariates. Applications include: (i) matched sampling on the univariate propensity score, which is a generalization of discriminant matching, (ii) multivariate adjustment by subclassification on the propensity score where the same subclasses are used to estimate treatment effects for all outcome variables and in all subpopulations, and (iii) visual representation of multivariate covariance adjustment by a two- dimensional plot.
Early home learning environments are the result of interactions between the developing children and the opportunity structures provided by their families. Income is one of several resources that affect the cognitive stimulation that children experience. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N= 2,174) this study examines the influence of household income on cognitive stimulation during the transition to school (aged 3–4 years to 7–8 years). Cross-sectional and longitudinal fixed effects regressions are estimated to examine income's effect. Household income was positively related to the level of cognitive stimulation in children's home environments across both sets of analyses. Home environments of children in low-income households were particularly sensitive to income changes over time. The implications of these results for programs and policies that reduce disparities in school readiness are discussed.
In this paper we investigate whether a conditional cash transfer program such as the Programa Nacional de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA) can simultaneously combat the problems of low school attendance and child work. PROGRESA is a new program of the Mexican government aimed at alleviating extreme poverty in rural areas. It combats the different causes of poverty by providing cash benefits that are targeted directly to households on the condition of children attending school and visiting health clinics on a regular basis. Some of the questions addressed are as follows: Does the program reduce child labor? Does it increase participation in school activities? Does the latter occur at the expense of children's leisure time? And how do the effects of the program vary by age group and gender? Our empirical analysis relies on data from a quasi-experimental design used to evaluate the impact of the program involving a sample of communities that receive PROGRESA benefits (treatment) and comparable communities that receive benefits at a later time (control). We estimate the effect of “treatment on the treated” using both double-difference and cross sectional difference estimators. Our estimates show significant increases in the school attendance of boys and girls that are accompanied by significant reductions in the participation of boys and girls in work activities. We also find that the program has a lower impact on the incidence of work for girls relative to boys.
Using a longitudinal survey from rural Guatemala, we examine the effect of an early childhood nutritional intervention on adult educational outcomes. An intent-to-treat model yields substantial effects of an experimental intervention that provided highly nutritious food supplements to children, a quarter century after it ended: increases of 1.2 grades completed for women and one quarter SD on standardised reading comprehension and non-verbal cognitive ability tests for both women and men. Two-stage least squares results that endogenise the actual supplement intakes corroborate these magnitudes. Improving the nutrient intakes of very young children can have substantial, long-term, educational consequences. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2009.
The propensity score is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular treatment given a vector of observed covariates. Previous theoretical arguments have shown that subclassification on the propensity score will balance all observed covariates. Subclassification on an estimated propensity score is illustrated, using observational data on treatments for coronary artery disease. Five subclasses defined by the estimated propensity score are constructed that balance 74 covariates, and thereby provide estimates of treatment effects using direct adjustment. These subclasses are applied within subpopulations, and model-based adjustments are then used to provide estimates of treatment effects within these subpopulations. Two appendixes address theoretical issues related to the application: the effectiveness of subclassification on the propensity score in removing bias, and balancing properties of propensity scores with incomplete data. Statistics Version of Record
We outline a framework for causal inference in setting where assignment to a binary treatment is ignorable, but compliance with the assignment is not perfect so that the receipt of treatment is nonignorable. To address the problems associated with comparing subjects by the ignorable assignment--an "intention-to-treat analysis"--we make use of instrumental variables, which have long been used by economists in the context of regression models with constant treatment effects. We show that the instrumental variables (IV) estimand can be embedded within the Rubin Causal Model (RCM) and that under some simple and easily interpretable assumptions, the IV estimand is the average causal effect for a subgroup of units, the compliers. Without these assumptions, the IV estimand is simply the ratio of intention-to-treat causal estimands with no interpretation as an average causal effect. The advantages of embedding the IV approach in the RCM are that it clarifies the nature of critical assumptions needed for a causal interpretation, and moreover allows us to consider sensitivity of the results to deviations from key assumptions in a straightforward manner. We apply our analysis to estimate the effect of veteran status in the Vietnam era on mortality, using the lottery number assigned priority for the draft as an instrument, and we use our results to investigate the sensitivity of the conclusions to critical assumptions. Statistics Version of Record
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes are becoming an extremely popular tool for improving the education and health outcomes of poor children in developing countries. An incomplete list of countries in which they are being implemented under the support of the World Bank and other international financial institutions includes Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil, Turkey and Mozambique. While the implementation details vary from country to country, many are modelled on the Mexican PROGRESA. In a typical CCT, mothers from poor backgrounds receive cash conditional on their promoting certain activities on behalf of their children. For their youngest children - usually those below the age of 6 - the conditionality involves visits to preventive healthcare centres in which their growth is monitored. School attendance is the most common stipulation for receipt of cash transfers for older children - usually those between 7 and 17 years old. This targeting of health and education of children is at the essence of the long-term poverty alleviation objective of CCT programmes. Such transfer programmes are also aimed at the short-term reduction of poverty, through the provision of immediate funds to indigent households.
In this Briefing Note, we will focus on the programme Familias en Acción (FA), the CCT implemented by the Colombian government from 2001/02. In particular, we will provide estimates of how the programme has influenced key welfare indicators such as school attendance, child nutrition and health status, as well as household consumption. In this respect, we will update the preliminary results that were reported in Attanasio et al. (2003 and 2004).
This research is part of a large evaluation effort, undertaken by a consortium formed by IFS, Econometria and SEI, which has considered the effects of Familias en Accion on a variety of outcomes one year after its implementation. In early reports, we focussed on the effects of the programme on school enrolment. In this paper, we both expand those results, by carefully analysing anticipation effects along with other issues, and complement them with an analysis of child labour - both paid and unpaid (including domestic) work. The child labour analysis is made possible due to a rich time use module of the surveys that has not previously been analysed. We find that the programme increased the school participation rates of 14 to 17 year old children quite substantially, by between 5 and 7 percentage points, and had lower, but non-negligible effects on the enrolment of younger children of between 1.4 and 2.4 percentage points. In terms of work, the effects are generally largest for younger children whose participation in domestic work decreased by around 10 to 12 percentage points after the programme but whose participation in income-generating work remained largely unaffected by the programme. We also find evidence of school and work time not being fully substitutable, suggesting that some, but not all, of the increased time at school may be drawn from children's leisure time.
Better early childhood nutrition improves schooling, adult health, skills, and wages, but there is little evidence regarding its effect on the next generation.
We assessed whether nutritional supplementation in children aged <7 to 15 y affected their children's nutritional status 29-38 y later.
We studied 791 children 0-12 y who were offspring of 401 Guatemalan women who had participated as children in a nutritional supplementation trial in which 2 villages were randomly assigned to receive a nutritious supplement (atole) and 2 were assigned to receive a less-nutritious supplement (fresco). We compared anthropometric indicators between the offspring of mothers exposed to atole and the offspring of mothers exposed to fresco.
Compared with the offspring of women exposed to fresco, the offspring of women exposed to atole had a 116-g (95% CI: 17, 215 g) higher birth weight, were 1.3-cm (0.4, 2.2 cm) taller, had a 0.6-cm (0.4, 0.9 cm) greater head circumference, had a 0.26 (0.09, 0.43) greater height-for-age z score, and had a 0.20 (0.02, 0.39) greater weight-for-age z score. The association for height differed by offspring sex. Sons of women exposed to atole were 2.0-cm (95% CI: 1.0, 3.1 cm) taller than the sons of women exposed to fresco. Supplementation was not associated with 6 other offspring anthropometric indicators that reflect measures of adiposity. Supplementation in boys did not affect their children's anthropometric measures.
Nutritional supplementation in girls is associated with substantial increases in their offsprings' (more for sons) birth weight, height, head circumference, height-for-age z score, and weight-for-age z score.
This note implements two research designs that attempt to isolate the effect of class size on achievement. A first strategy focuses on variation in class size in rural schools with fewer than 30 students, and hence only one classroom, per grade. Second, an approach similar to Angrist and Lavy's exploits regulations that allow schools with more than 30 students in a given grade to obtain an additional teacher. Both designs suggest class size negatively affects test scores. Copyright (c) 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This paper considers causal inference and sample selection bias in nonexperimental settings in which (i) few units in the nonexperimental comparison group are comparable to the treatment units, and (ii) selecting a subset of comparison units similar to the treatment units is difficult because units must be compared across a high-dimensional set of pretreatment characteristics. We discuss the use of propensity score-matching methods, and implement them using data from the National Supported Work experiment. Following LaLonde (1986), we pair the experimental treated units with nonexperimental comparison units from the CPS and PSID, and compare the estimates of the treatment effect obtained using our methods to the benchmark results from the experiment. For both comparison groups, we show that the methods succeed in focusing attention on the small subset of the comparison units comparable to the treated units and, hence, in alleviating the bias due to systematic differences between the treated and comparison units. © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog
The paper estimates the impact on school attendance and child labor of conditional cash payments to poor families in Brazil. It describes Brazil's transfer programs and presents statistics on school attendance and child labor. In the second half of the 1990s, many municipalities had adopted the "Bolsa Escola" (a cash transfer conditional on school attendance) and/or the federal minimum income program (in place during 1999 and 2000 and replaced by the "Bolsa Escola Federal" in 2001). Although conditional cash transfer programs in Brazil have been in place since 1996, studies on their ex-post impact are very few. Micro household level data from the 2000 Census allows the use of propensity score methods to estimate the impact of income transfers on child labor and school attendance. The paper finds that income transfer programs had no significant effect on child labor but a positive and significant impact on school attendance. These preliminary results suggest that these programs have not been effective in fighting child labor in Brazil. They increase the chance of a poor child going to school but do not reduce her labor activity perhaps because she prefers to combine school and labor, considering that the transfers are too small to provide an incentive to forgo the labor income.
Food insecurity has been associated with diverse developmental consequences for U.S. children primarily from cross-sectional studies. We used longitudinal data to investigate how food insecurity over time related to changes in reading and mathematics test performance, weight and BMI, and social skills in children. Data were from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, a prospective sample of approximately 21,000 nationally representative children entering kindergarten in 1998 and followed through 3rd grade. Food insecurity was measured by parent interview using a modification of the USDA module in which households were classified as food insecure if they reported > or =1 affirmative response in the past year. Households were grouped into 4 categories based on the temporal occurrence of food insecurity in kindergarten and 3rd grade. Children's academic performance, height, and weight were assessed directly. Children's social skills were reported by teachers. Analyses examined the effects of modified food insecurity on changes in child outcomes using lagged, dynamic, and difference (i.e., fixed-effects) models and controlling for child and household contextual variables. In lagged models, food insecurity was predictive of poor developmental trajectories in children before controlling for other variables. Food insecurity thus serves as an important marker for identifying children who fare worse in terms of subsequent development. In all models with controls, food insecurity was associated with outcomes, and associations differed by gender. This study provides the strongest empirical evidence to date that food insecurity is linked to specific developmental consequences for children, and that these consequences may be both nutritional and nonnutritional.
In behavioral medicine trials, such as smoking cessation trials, 2 or more active treatments are often compared. Noncompliance
by some subjects with their assigned treatment poses a challenge to the data analyst. The principal stratification framework
permits inference about causal effects among subpopulations characterized by potential compliance. However, in the absence
of prior information, there are 2 significant limitations: (1) the causal effects cannot be point identified for some strata
and (2) individuals in the subpopulations (strata) cannot be identified. We propose to use additional information—compliance-predictive
covariates—to help identify the causal effects and to help describe characteristics of the subpopulations. The probability
of membership in each principal stratum is modeled as a function of these covariates. The model is constructed using marginal
compliance models (which are identified) and a sensitivity parameter that captures the association between the 2 marginal
distributions. We illustrate our methods in both a simulation study and an analysis of data from a smoking cessation trial.
Substantial, but indirect, evidence suggests that improving nutrition in early childhood in developing countries is a long-term economic investment. We investigated the direct effect of a nutrition intervention in early childhood on adult economic productivity.
We obtained economic data from 1424 Guatemalan individuals (aged 25-42 years) between 2002 and 2004. They accounted for 60% of the 2392 children (aged 0-7 years) who had been enrolled in a nutrition intervention study during 1969-77. In this initial study, two villages were randomly assigned a nutritious supplement (atole) for all children and two villages a less nutritious one (fresco). We estimated annual income, hours worked, and average hourly wages from all economic activities. We used linear regression models, adjusting for potentially confounding factors, to assess the relation between economic variables and exposure to atole or fresco at specific ages between birth and 7 years.
Exposure to atole before, but not after, age 3 years was associated with higher hourly wages, but only for men. For exposure to atole from 0 to 2 years, the increase was US$0.67 per hour (95% CI 0.16-1.17), which meant a 46% increase in average wages. There was a non-significant tendency for hours worked to be reduced and for annual incomes to be greater for those exposed to atole from 0 to 2 years.
Improving nutrition in early childhood led to substantial increases in wage rates for men, which suggests that investments in early childhood nutrition can be long-term drivers of economic growth.
This paper studies the long-term effects of participation in the Mexican Oportunidades program on a variety of outcomes and behaviors of rural youth in Mexico. It analyzes data from a social experiment, which randomly phased-in the program in rural Mexican villages. In 1997, 320 villages (the treatment group) were randomly selected for early incorporation into the program and 186 villages (the control group) were designated as a control group to be incorporated eighteen months later. This paper examines whether differential exposure to the program significantly impacted educational attainment, labor market outcomes, marriage, migration and cognitive achievement of youth. The results show positive impacts of longer exposure on grades of schooling attained, but no effects on achievement tests. With respect to work, we find an overall reduction in work for male youth.
We outline a framework for causal inference in settings where assignment to a binary treatment is ignorable, but compliance with the assignment is not perfect so that the receipt of treatment is nonignorable. To address the problems associated with comparing subjects by the ignorable assignment - an "intention-to-treat analysis" - we make use of instrumental variables, which have long been used by economists in the context of regression models with constant treatment effects. We show that the instrumental variables (IV) estimand can be embedded within the Rubin Causal Model (RCM) and that under some simple and easily interpretable assumptions, the IV estimand is the average causal effect for a subgroup of units, the compliers. Without these assumptions, the IV estimand is simply the ratio of intention-to-treat causal estimands with no interpretation as an average causal effect. The advantages of embedding the IV approach in the RCM are that it clarifies the nature of critical assumptions needed for a causal interpretation, and moreover allows us to consider sensitivity of the results to deviations from key assumptions in a straightforward manner. We apply our analysis to estimate the effect of veteran status in the Vietnam era on mortality, using the lottery number that assigned priority for the draft as an instrument, and we use our results to investigate the sensitivity of the conclusions to critical assumptions.
Six years after a group of low-income adolescent mothers in Santiago, Chile had given birth to their first child, 42 percent of the fathers had abandoned their children. The authors gathered retrospective life-histories on these mothers and used indicators of child well-being to examine patterns of family formation and the reproduction of poverty in mother-child pairs. While the extended family shelters mother and child, it does not seem to compensate for the cost, in terms of child well-being, of abandonment by the father. Mothers' additional years of schooling, however, and the percentage of family income they earn have a positive effect on their children, suggesting that improved educational and income-earning opportunities for young mothers can contain the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
This report assesses the impact of the education interventions of the PRAF II program on educational outcomes of children age 6-13 in rural areas of Honduras. Two interventions were examined, a "demand" intervention that provided families with monetary payments if their children were enrolled in (and regularly attended) primary school, and a supply side incentive that provided assistance to schools. Econometric estimates suggest that the demand side intervention of the PRAF II program increased enrollment rates by 1-2 percentage points, reduced the dropout rate by 2-3 percentage points, increased school attendance (conditional on enrollment) by about 0.8 days per month, and increased annual promotion rates to the next grade by 2-4 percentage points. There was no effect on child labor force participation. Some of these impacts appear to be negatively correlated with household income, which implies that they are stronger for poorer households. Simulation results indicate that, over the long run, the demand intervention will increase the years of schooling of 14 year old children by about 0.7 years. In contrast, the supply side intervention has had no effect on any outcomes, which is not surprising given that most parts of it were never implemented.
The problem of malnutrition in poor societies is best viewed as a “syndrome of developmental impairment,” which includes growth failure; delayed motor, cognitive, and behavioural development; diminished immunocompetence; and increased morbidity and mortality. Growth retardation is often found in association with other problems, such as vitamin A deficiency and anaemia. These clusters of nutritional problems flourish during periods of vulnerability, namely in utero and during the first three years of life, and affect at least a third of all young children in developing countries. Survivors of malnutrition in early childhood suffer functional disadvantages as adults, including diminished intellectual performance, low work capacity, and increased risk of delivery complications. The prevention of low birthweight and the promotion of adequate growth and development during early childhood will result in healthier, more productive adults. Such investments, because they build human capital, are best viewed as long-term economic strategies.
The authors examined whether gender differences in language achievement were related not only to gender differences in attitudes toward schooling but also to the attitudes toward schooling of peers (i.e., peers in classes and in schools). The authors used multilevel analysis on data compiled from a longitudinal research project in secondary education. The primary results revealed that all boys who had negative school-related attitudes were underachievers in language. Furthermore, boys were more influenced by the attitudes of their peers in classes than were girls. The attitudes of peers in schools did not affect the gender gap in language achievement.
Propensity score matching refers to a class of multivariate methods used in comparative studies to construct treated and matched control samples that have similar distributions on many covariates. This matching is the observational study analog of randomization in ideal experiments, but is far less complete as it can only balance the distribution of observed covariates, whereas randomization balances the distribution of all covariates, both observed and unobserved. An important feature of propensity score matching is that it can be easily combined with model-based regression adjustments or with matching on a subset of special prognostic covariates or combinations of prognostic covariates that have been identified as being especially predictive of the outcome variables. We extend earlier results by developing approximations for the distributions of covariates in matched samples created with linear propensity score methods for the practically important situation where matching uses both the estimated linear propensity scores and a set of special prognostic covariates. Such matching on a subset of special prognostic covariates is an observational study analog of blocking in a randomized experiment. An example combining propensity score matching with Mahalanobis metric matching and regression adjustment is presented that demonstrates the flexibility of these methods for designing an observational study that effectively reduces both bias due to many observed covariates and bias and variability due to a more limited subset of covariates.
Many argue that the composition of a school or classroom-that is, the characteristics of the students themselves-affect the educational attainment of an individual student. This influence of the students in a classroom is often referred to as a peer effect. There have been few systematic studies that empirically examine the peer effect in the educational process. In this research, we examine the peer effect with a unique data set that includes individual student achievement scores and comprehensive characteristics of the students' families, teachers, other school characteristics, and peers for five countries. The data allow an examination of peer effects in both private and public schools in all countries. Our analysis indicates that peer effects are a significant determinant of educational achievement; the effects of peers appear to be greater for low-ability students than for high-ability students. The finding is robust across countries but not robust across school type. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
In this paper, we examine the effect of income on child development in the United States and the United Kingdom, as measured by scores on cognitive, behavioral, and social assessments. In line with previous results for the United States, we find that for both countries income generally has an effect on child development that is positive and significant, but whose size is small relative to other family background variables.
Many randomized experiments suffer from the “truncation-by-death” problem where potential outcomes are not defined for some subpopulations. For example, in medical trials, quality-of-life measures are only defined for surviving patients. In this article, I derive the sharp bounds on causal effects under various assumptions. My identification analysis is based on the idea that the “truncation-by-death” problem can be formulated as the contaminated data problem. The proposed analytical techniques can be applied to other settings in causal inference including the estimation of direct and indirect effects and the analysis of three-arm randomized experiments with noncompliance.
Many policymakers propose early childhood nutrition programs as a way to increase students’ academic achievement. This paper investigates the nutrition–learning nexus using a unique longitudinal data set that follows a large sample of Filipino children from birth until the end of their primary education. We find that better nourished children perform significantly better in school, partly because they enter school earlier and thus have more time to learn but mostly because of greater learning productivity per year of schooling. Our cost–benefit analysis suggests that a dollar invested in an early childhood nutrition program in a developing country could potentially return at least three dollars worth of gains in academic achievement, and perhaps much more.
Early childhood nutrition is thought to have important effects on education, broadly defined to include various forms of learning. We advance beyond previous literature on the effect of early childhood nutrition on education in developing countries by using unique longitudinal data begun during a nutritional experiment during early childhood with educational outcomes measured in adulthood. Estimating an intent-to-treat model capturing the effect of exposure to the intervention from birth to 36 months, our results indicate significantly positive, and fairly substantial, effects of the randomized nutrition intervention a quarter century after it ended: increased grade attainment by women (1.2 grades) via increased likelihood of completing primary school and some secondary school; speedier grade progression by women; a one-quarter SD increase in a test of reading comprehension with positive effects found for both women and men; and a one-quarter SD increase on nonverbal cognitive tests scores. There is little evidence of heterogeneous impacts with the exception being that exposure to the intervention had a larger effect on grade attainment and reading comprehension scores for females in wealthier households. The findings are robust to an array of alternative estimators of the standard errors and controls for sample attrition.
Incl. bibl., abstract. Several developing economies have recently introduced conditional cash transfer programs, which provide money to poor families contingent on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital, such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers. The approach is both an alternative to more traditional social assistance programs and a demand-side complement to the supply of health and education services. Unlike most development initiatives, conditional cash transfer programs have been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness using experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Evaluation results for programs launched in Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Turkey reveal successes in addressing many of the failures in delivering social assistance, such as weak poverty targeting, disincentive effects, and limited welfare impacts. There is clear evidence of success from the first generation of programs in Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua in increasing enrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raising household consumption. Many questions remain unanswered, however, including the potential of conditional cash transfer programs to function well under different conditions, to address a broader range of challenges among poor and vulnerable populations, and to prevent the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
We consider estimation, from a double-blind randomized trial, of treatment effect within levels of base-line covariates on an outcome that is measured after a post-treatment event E has occurred in the subpopulation 𝒫(E,E) that would experience event E regardless of treatment. Specifically, we consider estimation of the parameters γ indexing models for the outcome mean conditional on treatment and base-line covariates in the subpopulation 𝒫(E,E). Such parameters are not identified from randomized trial data but become identified if additionally it is assumed that the subpopulation 𝒫(Ē,E) of subjects that would experience event E under the second treatment but not under the first is empty and a parametric model for the conditional probability that a subject experiences event E if assigned to the first treatment given that the subject would experience the event if assigned to the second treatment, his or her outcome under the second treatment and his or her pretreatment covariates. We develop a class of estimating equations whose solutions comprise, up to asymptotic equivalence, all consistent and asymptotically normal estimators of γ under these two assumptions. In addition, we derive a locally semiparametric efficient estimator of γ. We apply our methods to estimate the effect on mean viral load of vaccine versus placebo after infection with human immunodeficiency virus (the event E) in a placebo-controlled randomized acquired immune deficiency syndrome vaccine tri.
A new antipoverty program in Mexico, PROGRESA, provides monetary transfers to families that are contingent upon their children's regular attendance at school. The benefit levels vary with the grade level and gender of the child and are intended to offset the opportunity costs of not sending children to school. The initial phase of the program was implemented as a randomized social experiment. This article uses a Markov schooling transition model applied to the experimental data to assess the impact of the subsidy program on schooling attainment and on the underlying behaviors that determine schooling attainment, including ages of matriculation, dropout rates, grade repetition rates, and school reentry rates. Results show that the program increases schooling attainment effectively by reducing dropout rates and facilitating grade progression, particularly during the transition from primary to secondary school. Many of these effects would not be clear if attention were limited to enrollments as in much of the previous literature. A simulation evaluating the effects of longer terms of exposure to the program indicates that, if children were to participate between ages 6 to 14, there would be an increase of 0.7 years in average educational attainment levels and an increase of 21% in the proportion of children attending junior secondary school, with somewhat larger effects for boys than for girls.
We examine the relationship between educational inputs-primarily pupil-teacher ratios-and school outcomes in South Africa immediately before the end of apartheid government. Black households were severely limited in their residential choice under apartheid and attended schools for which funding decisions were made centrally, by White-controlled entities over which they had no control. The allocations resulted in marked disparities in average class sizes. Controlling for household background variables, we find strong and significant effects of pupil-teacher ratios on enrollment, on educational achievement, and on test scores for numeracy. © 2000 the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Many scientific problems require that treatment comparisons be adjusted for posttreatment variables, but the estimands underlying standard methods are not causal effects. To address this deficiency, we propose a general framework for comparing treatments adjusting for posttreatment variables that yields principal effects based on principal stratification. Principal stratification with respect to a posttreatment variable is a cross-classification of subjects defined by the joint potential values of that posttreatment variable tinder each of the treatments being compared. Principal effects are causal effects within a principal stratum. The key property of principal strata is that they are not affected by treatment assignment and therefore can be used just as any pretreatment covariate. such as age category. As a result, the central property of our principal effects is that they are always causal effects and do not suffer from the complications of standard posttreatment-adjusted estimands. We discuss briefly that such principal causal effects are the link between three recent applications with adjustment for posttreatment variables: (i) treatment noncompliance, (ii) missing outcomes (dropout) following treatment noncompliance. and (iii) censoring by death. We then attack the problem of surrogate or biomarker endpoints, where we show, using principal causal effects, that all current definitions of surrogacy, even when perfectly true, do not generally have the desired interpretation as causal effects of treatment on outcome. We go on to forrmulate estimands based on principal stratification and principal causal effects and show their superiority.
Although research has clearly established that low family income has negative impacts on children's cognitive skills and social-emotional competence, less often is a family's experience of material hardship considered. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (N=21,255), this study examined dual components of family income and material hardship along with parent mediators of stress, positive parenting, and investment as predictors of 6-year-old children's cognitive skills and social-emotional competence. Support was found for a model that identified unique parent-mediated paths from income to cognitive skills and from income and material hardship to social-emotional competence. The findings have implications for future study of family income and child development and for identification of promising targets for policy intervention.
Cash transfers conditional on certain behaviors, intended to provide access to social services, have been introduced in several developing countries. The effectiveness of these strategies in different contexts has not previously been the subject of a systematic review.
To assess the effectiveness of conditional monetary transfers in improving access to and use of health services, as well as improving health outcomes, in low- and middle-income countries.
Relevant publications were identified via electronic medical and social science databases from inception to April 2006 (PubMED, EMBASE, POPLINE, CAB Direct, Healthcare Management Information Consortium, WHOLIS (World Health Organization Library Database), African Healthline, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), Eldis, British Library for Development Studies (BLDS), ID21, Journal Storage (Jstor), Inter-Science, ScienceDirect, Internet Documents in Economics Access Service (Research Papers in Economics) (IDEAS[Repec]), Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature (LILACS), MEDCARIB, Virtual Library in Health (ADOLEC), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), FRANCIS, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness, and the Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group (EPOC) Register. Reference lists of relevant papers and "gray" literature resources were also searched.
To be included, a paper had to meet study design criteria (randomized controlled trial, interrupted time series analysis, and controlled before and after study) and include a measure of at least 1 of the following outcomes: health care utilization, health expenditure, or health outcomes. Twenty-eight papers were retrieved for assessment and 10 were included in this review.
Methodological details and outcomes were extracted by 2 reviewers who independently assessed the quality of the papers.
Overall, the evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer programs are effective in increasing the use of preventive services and sometimes improving health status.
Further research is needed to clarify the cost effectiveness of conditional cash transfer programs and better understand which components play a critical role. The potential success and desirability of such programs in low-income settings, with more limited health system capacity, also deserves more investigation.
This study investigates the correlation between food insecurity, educational achievement, and health among kindergarten children in the United States. Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten Cohort are used to analyze educational achievement and physical growth of kindergartners faced with food insecurity. The results demonstrate that children begin to experience the effects of food insecurity even at the most marginal level of household food deprivation. Children in households with any signs of food insecurity score lower and learn less during the school year. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.
Empirical analysis of peer effects on student achievement has been open to question because of the difficulties of separating peer effects from other confounding influences. While most econometric attention has been directed at issues of simultaneous determination of peer interactions, we argue that issues of omitted and mismeasured variables are likely to be more important. We control for the most important determinants of achievement that will confound peer estimates by removing student and school-by-grade fixed effects in addition to observable family and school characteristics. The analysis also addresses the reciprocal nature of peer interactions and the interpretation of estimates based upon models using past achievement as the measure of peer group quality. The results indicate that peer achievement has a positive effect on achievement growth. Moreover, students throughout the school test score distribution appear to benefit from higher achieving schoolmates. On the other hand, the variance in achievement appears to have no systematic effect. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
"This document synthesizes the findings contained in a series of reports prepared by IFPRI for PROGRESA between November 1998 and November 2000... PROGRESA is one of the major programs of the Mexican government aimed at developing the human capital of poor households. Targeting its benefits directly to the population in extreme poverty in rural areas, PROGRESA aims to alleviate current and future poverty levels through cash transfers to mothers in households.... One of the most important contributions of IFPRI's evaluation of PROGRESA has been the continuation of the program in spite of the historic change in the government of Mexico in the 2000 elections. The overwhelming (and unprecedented) evidence that a poverty alleviation program shows strong signs of having a significant impact on the welfare and human capital investment of poor rural families in Mexico has contributed to the decision of the Fox administration to continue with the program and to expand its coverage in the poor urban areas of the country after some improvements in the design of the program.... The majority of the improvements in the design of PROGRESA (renamed Oportunidades by the Fox administration) were based on findings of the evaluation of PROGRESA that revealed areas of needed improvements in some of the structural components and the operation of the program... Yet in spite of these improvements in the program, the evaluation findings suggest that some issues remain to be resolved." from Text
Bangladesh’s Food for Education Program (FFE), which provided free food to poor families if their children attended primary school, was successful in increasing children’s school enrollment, especially for girls. However, this success came at a price as class sizes increased. This paper uses a rich data set that includes school achievement test scores, information on schools, and household data to explore the impact of FFE on the quality of education. The analysis focuses on the impact of FFE on the achievement test scores of students who did not receive benefits. We find evidence for a negative impact of FFE on the test scores of non-beneficiary students through peer effects rather than through classroom crowding effects.
Escaping the poverty trap : investing in children in Latin America
- R Morán
Morán, R. (Ed.). (2003). Escaping the poverty trap : investing in children in Latin America.
Washington D.C.: The Johns Hopkins University Press.