Family Networks and School Enrolment: Evidence from a Randomized Social Experiment

By Imran Rasul, M. Angelucci, Marcos Rangel, Giacomi De Giorgi. Social Science Research Network, 2007

186 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present evidence on whether and how a household's behavior is influenced by the presence and characteristics of its extended family. Using data from the PROGRESA program in Mexico, we exploit information on the paternal and maternal surnames of heads and spouses in conjunction with the Spanish naming convention to identify the inter and intra generational family links of each household to others in the same village. We then exploit the randomized research design of the PROGRESA evaluation data to identify whether the treatment effects of PROGRESA transfers on secondary school enrolment vary according to the characteristics of extended family. We find PROGRESA only raises secondary enrolment among households that are embedded in a family network. Eligible but isolated households do not respond. The mechanism through which the extended family influences household schooling choices is the redistribution of resources within the family network from eligibles that receive de facto unconditional cash transfers from PROGRESA, towards eligibles on the margin of enrolling children into secondary school.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Safety Research, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fa347951616cfe528f9ca0642a429a53a0d5508a

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Citations in the corpus

Building connections: Political corruption and road construction in India (2018, background): “11 Angelucci et al. (2010), and Mastrobuoni and Patacchini (2012) also uses name-based matching to study social networks.”
Peer Effects in Program Participation (2014, unknown): “8In the examples cited in footnote 3, a large part of the estimated effects are due to consumption complementarities: when an individual is treated for worms, the benefit of the technology to their peers declines (Kremer and Miguel, 2007); when a child goes to school, the benefit to their friends of”
The Schooling Decision: Family Preferences, Intergenerational Conflict, and Moral Hazard in the Brazilian Favelas (2012, background): “…transfer programs on school attendance, see Bourgignon, Ferreira, and Leite (2003), Glewwe and Olinto (2004), Schultz (2004), Parker, Rubalcava, and Teruel (2008), Bobonis and Finan (2009), Angelucci et al. (2010), and specifically for Brazil, de Janvry et al. (2007) and Glewwe and Kassouf (2008).”
Household Choices and Child Development (2010, methodology): “In this case, seeing a parent not supply time to the market is consistent with (1) that parent’s wage offer being low, (2) the household utility function weight on that parent’s leisure being high, (3) that parent’s time with the child being highly productive, or any combination of (1) - (3).”
Education and Human Capital Externalities: Evidence from Colonial Benin (2015, background): “While the importance of extended families has been questioned in the United States (see Altonji, Hayashi, and Kotlikoff 1992), studies find that they play a significant role in Africa and India (see Shavit and Pierce 1991; La Ferrara 2003; Cox and Fafchamps 2007; Angelucci et al. 2010).”
The Heterogeneous Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers (2013, background): “18 from the Progresa experiment, which offered relatively more generous transfers (Bobonis and Finan, 2009; Angelucci et al., 2010).”