Improving the Design of Conditional Transfer Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Education Experiment in Colombia †

By Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Marianne Bertrand, Leigh L. Linden, Francisco Pérez-Calle. 2011

299 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using a student level randomization, we compare three education-based conditional cash transfers designs: a standard design, a design where part of the monthly transfers are postponed until children have to re-enroll in school, and a design that lowers the reward for attendance but incentivizes graduation and tertiary enrollment. The two nonstandard designs significantly increase enrollment rates at both the secondary and tertiary levels while delivering the same attendance gains as the standard design. Postponing some of the attendance transfers to the time of re-enrollment appears particularly effective for the most at-risk children. (JEL H23, I21, I22, J13, O15)

Subfields: Accounting, Gender Studies, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4488618452d9503778877d1ab06f73f24a9d3e0f

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Citations in the corpus

Relative Effectiveness of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers for Schooling Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review (2013, unknown): “The risk of bias due to self-reporting is something that needs to be assessed further, but existing evidence suggests that it may be large, especially in experiments – due to differential reporting between treatment arms (Baird and Özler 2012; Barrera-Osorio et al. 2011).”
Subsidizing Vocational Training for Disadvantaged Youth in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Trial (2011, background): “…(see, e.g., Joshua Angrist et al. 2002; Angrist, Eric Bettinger, and Michael Kremer 2006; Bettinger, Kremer, and Juan E. Saavedra 2008; and Felipe Barrera-Osorio et al. 2011), conditional cash or in-kind transfers to families who send their kids to school (see, e.g., Attanasio et al. 2005; Jere…”
Long-Term Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers: Review of the Evidence (2019, background): “In earlier work after just one year and using a more traditional survey, however, they report evidence of the possibility of negative intra-household spillover effects, a potential complication with such a design (Barrera-Osorio et al. 2011).”
Conditional, unconditional and everything in between: a systematic review of the effects of cash transfer programmes on schooling outcomes (2014, background): “experiments – due to differential reporting between treatment arms (Barrera-Osorio et al. 2011; Baird and Özler 2012).”
The Impact of Free Secondary Education: Experimental Evidence from Ghana (2021, background): “Barrera-Osorio et al. (2007) find that fee reductions increased primary enrollment but find no effect on secondary enrollment. Angrist et al. (2006) find that vouchers for private secondary school increased completion rates.”
Child Schooling and Child Work in the Presence of a Partial Education Subsidy (2017, background): “Indeed, Panel A of Table 5 shows larger increases in school and work by children aged 10 – 14 with older siblings than among those without older siblings, a finding comparable to the negative displacement result reported in Barrera-Osorio et al. (2011).”
Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient (2015, unknown): “Subsidios Condicionados a la Asistencia Escolar (SCAE) in Colombia (Barrera-Osorio et al. 2011), GiveDirectly in Kenya (Haushofer and Shapiro 2013), and a cash transfer for preschool in Uganda (Gilligan and Roy 2013).”
The Heterogeneous Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers (2013, methodology): “6 Barrera-Osorio et al. (2011) find that untreated siblings in a Colombian program actually have lower attendance and enrollment.”
Improving Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: Lessons from Rigorous Evaluations (2014, background): “Barrera-Osorio et al. (2011) found that the siblings of cash transfer beneficiaries in Colombia were less likely to attend school and more likely to drop out than the siblings of non-beneficiaries.”
The Production of Human Capital in Developed Countries: Evidence from 196 Randomized Field Experiments (2016, unknown): “…al. 2002; Angrist and Lavy 2009; Kremer, Miguel, and Thornton 2009; Behrman, Sengupta, and Todd 2005; Angrist, Bettinger, and Kremer 2006; Angrist, Lang, and Oreopoulos 2009; Fryer 2011; Fryer and Holden 2013; Barrera-Osorio et al. 2011; Bettinger 2012; Hahn, Leavitt, and Aaron 1994; Jackson 2010).”