Cash Transfers and Child Schooling: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation of the Role of Conditionality

By Richard Akresh, D. Walque, H. Kazianga. 2013

167 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The authors conduct a randomized experiment in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional. Families under the conditional schemes were required to have their children ages 7-15 enrolled in school and attending classes regularly. There were no such requirements under the unconditional programs. The results indicate that unconditional and conditional cash transfer programs have a similar impact increasing the enrollment of children who are traditionally favored by parents for school participation, including boys, older children, and higher ability children. However, the conditional transfers are significantly more effective than the unconditional transfers in improving the enrollment of"marginal children"who are initially less likely to go to school, such as girls, younger children, and lower ability children. Thus, conditionality plays a critical role in benefiting children who are less likely to receive investments from their parents.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Nutrition and Dietetics, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32ff378ebab5ab3387ea40997842b3fb6a42539d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Esther Duflo
2. Daniel Aaronson
3. P. Dupas
4. F. Devoto
5. B. Mazumder
6. J. Hagen‐Zanker
7. Jishnu Das
8. Fabian Lange

In Nutrition and Dietetics

1. Esther Duflo
2. Richard J. Murnane
3. A. Ganimian

In Safety Research

1. Richard J. Murnane
2. A. Ganimian
3. Esther Duflo
4. P. Dupas
5. Jishnu Das
6. J. Hagen‐Zanker
7. Asim Ijaz Khwaja
8. Valentina Barca

Citations in the corpus

• Improving Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: Lessons from Rigorous Evaluations (2014, background): “Akresh et al. (2013) Importantly, there is evidence that providing parents with cash transfers that are considerably less than the full value of the market wage of their children’s labor results in increased school enrollment.27 This suggests that cash transfers may “nudge” low-income parents to…”
• Report Cards: The Impact of Providing School and Child Test Scores on Educational Markets (2014, background): “…the average yearly gain experienced by children in our sample).32 Similarly, the gain in enrollment represents a cost per marginal child enrolled of $20, which is significantly lower than several programs that are currently regarded as quite successful in low-income countries (Akresh et al., 2013).”
• Fertility transitions along the extensive and intensive margins (2014, background): “Our empirical application examines fertility along the extensive and intensive margins in response to a large-scale school-building program in the American South.2 The Rosenwald Rural Schools Initiative (Aaronson and Mazumder 2011) prompted the construction of almost 5,000 new schools, potentially e”
• The Impact of Cash Transfers: A Review of the Evidence from Low- and Middle-income Countries (2018, background): “Two studies found a statistically significant effect, both of these referred to language test scores, one being an improvement (Akresh et al., 2013) for the Nahouri Cash Transfers Pilot Project in Burkina Faso and one a decrease for Colombia’s Familias en Accion (Baez and Camacho, 2011).”
• Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education † (2015, background): “Akresh et al. (2013) find no difference for the sample as a whole, and Baird et al.”