Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment

By Sarah Baird, Craig T. McIntosh, Berk Özler. 2011

889 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Cash or condition evidence from a cash transfer experiment, conducted from 2008 to the end of 2009 in Malawi. The study observed the impact of conditionality in cash transfer programs with two distinct interventions: unconditional transfers (UCT arm) and transfers conditional on school attendance (CCT arm) targeted at adolescent girls in Malawi on individual level. Dropout rates declined in both treatment arms, however the UCT arm is 43 percent as large as the CCT arm. The fraction of days attended in the CCT arm is significantly higher than the UCT. Cognitive ability, math and English scores significantly improve for the CCT but not for the UCT. Probability of pregnancy and marriage were much lower in the UCT arm. The delays in marriage and fertility in the UCT arm are found entirely among adolescent girls who dropped out of school after the start of the intervention. Improvements in human capital for the recipients of the CCT are achieved at the cost of worse outcomes for people who drop out of school. Funding for the study derived from the Global Development Network, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Africa Project, World Bank Research Support Budget Grant, World Bank Knowledge for Change Trust Fund, World Development Report 2007 Small Grants Fund, Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, and Gender Action Plan Trust Fund.

Subfields: Education, Gender Studies, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/458d2a1934d58c60aa251f8a13558331319aead2

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Citations in the corpus

Measuring the Economic Gain of Investing in Girls: The Girl Effect Dividend (2011, positive): “To invest in girls’ health, emerging evidence is finding that unconditional cash transfers can change girls’ behaviors (mostly by delayed marriage and childbearing, see Baird et al 2010), but supply-side interventions may also be effective.”
The global state of evidence on interventions to prevent child marriage (2017, background): “…of school uniforms; teacher HIV training program Schooling Attendance rate, ever pregnant Ever pregnant Malawi Zomba Cash Transfer Program, 2007–09 Baird et al. 2011 Randomized Controlled Trial Single Conditional cash transfer (enroll in school) Economic School enrollment, pregnancy School…”
Generating Skilled Self-Employment in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Uganda* (2014, background): “Existing research on UCTs mostly focuses on education and health investments in children, and generally finds high impacts (Baird et al., 2011; Benhassine et al., 2013).”
Universal Basic Income in the Developing World (2019, neutral): “We are not aware of other studies that similarly vary duration; a few studies examine how effects evolve over the fixed, common duration of a given transfer scheme (e.g. Baird et al. (2011)).”
Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India (2013, neutral): “(2006), Filmer and Schady (2011), and Baird et al. (2011). Fiszbein & Schady (2009) provide a good review of this literature.”