Grandmothers and Granddaughters : Old-Age Pensions and Intrahousehold Allocation in South Africa

By Esther Duflo. 2000

1,852 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper studies whether the impact of a cash transfer on child nutritional status is affected by the gender of its recipient. In the early 1990's, the benefits and coverage of the South African social pension program were expanded for the black population. In 1993, the benefits were about twice the median income per capita in rural areas. Over a quarter of black South African children under age five live with a pension recipient. My estimates suggest that pensions received by women had a large impact on the anthropometric status of girls (it improved their weight given height by 1.19 standard deviations, and their height given age by 1.16 standard deviations), but little effect on that of boys. In contrast, I found no similar effect for pensions received by men. This suggests that the household does not function as a unitary entity, and that they efficiency of public transfer programs may depend on the gender of the recipient.

Subfields: Demography, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

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Citations in the corpus

Labor market opportunities and women's decision making power within households (2016, background): “Examples of these outcomes are spending on men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing (Lundberg et al. 1997; Phipps and Burton 1998; Bobonis 2009), on alcohol and tobacco (Phipps and Burton; Bobonis; Hoddinott and Haddad 1995, Wang 2014), and children’s health and education (Thomas 1990, 1994; Haddad a”
Determinants and Consequences of Bargaining Power in Households (2006, positive): “…Duflo and Udry 2004; Ward-Batts); and child outcomes like health and education (Schultz 1990; Thomas 1990, 1994; Haddad and Hoddinott 1994; Rose 1999; Duflo 2003; Duflo and Udry).3 1 18.0% of widows aged 65 and over lived in poverty in 1997, compared to 13.1% of all elderly women and 13.3% of the…”
Child labor and schooling responses to anticipated income in South Africa (2006, positive): “…other studies that use the OAP to identify income effects have documented sharing of the pension income with co-resident adults (Lund 1993, Case 2001, Bertrand, Mullainathan, and Miller 2003), across households (Jensen 2004, Edmonds, Mammen, and Miller 2005), and with children (Duflo 2000, 2003).”
Conditional, unconditional and everything in between: a systematic review of the effects of cash transfer programmes on schooling outcomes (2014, background): “Whether examining the old-age pension programme in South Africa or the child support grant also in South Africa, studies find that UCTs improve schooling outcomes among children, along with other outcomes (see, for example, Duflo 2003).”
Gender Differences in Preferences, Intra-Household Externalities, and Low Demand for Improved Cookstoves (2013, background): “…of adoption (Feder & Slade, 1984; Conley & Udry, 2001; Gine & Yang, 2009), may suffer from self-control problems (Banerjee & Mullainathan, 2010; Duflo et al., 2011), may adopt at sub-optimal rates due to externalities (Kremer & Miguel, 2007), or may experiment inefficiently little (Foster &…”
Savings in Transnational Households: A Field Experiment among Migrants from El Salvador (2015, background): “1 See the review in Strauss and Thomas (1995), as well as Duflo (2003), Rangel (2006), and Martinez (2013).”
The Impact of Economic Resource Transfers to Women Versus Men (2012, background): “However, Duflo (2000) is cited by Duflo (2003) as a nonparametric version of the same analysis.”
Limited insurance within the household: evidence from a field experiment in Kenya (2008, background): “Examples include Du o (2003), Thomas (1990), Lundberg, Pollak, and Wales (1997), and Haddad and Hoddinott (1994).”
Sons, Daughters, and Parental Behaviour (2005, background): “Duflo (2003) finds that the effects of a substantial increase in social pensions in South Africa depended on the gender of the recipient.”