Schooling impacts of an unconditional cash transfer program in Mali

Eric Sessou, Melissa Hidrobo, Shalini Roy and Lieven Huybregts

No 2139, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: In rural West Africa, the rate of out-of-school children is high and delayed entry to primary school is common, particularly for girls. Using the randomized roll-out of an unconditional cash transfer program (Jigisemejiri) in Mali, we examine its impact on child schooling by age and sex. The program leads to significant improvements in schooling outcomes for girls, but not boys. Improvements among girls are especially salient among younger (ages 6–9) and older (ages 15–18) girls. Pathway analysis reveals that the program reduces the time younger girls spend in agricultural work at home and the time older girls spend in domestic work as well as self-employment. Households in the program also spend more on education for older girls in terms of school fees, materials, and transport.

Keywords: girls education; education; child labour; households; randomized controlled trials; children; cash transfers; Mali; Western Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/140875

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:2139

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().