Cash transfers, conditions, school enrollment, and child work: evidence from a randomized experiment in Ecuador

Norbert Schady and M. Caridad Araujo

No 3930, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great policy importance. An attendant question is whether program effects are larger when transfers are"conditioned"on certain behaviors, such as a requirement that households enroll their children in school. This paper uses a randomized study design to analyze the impact of the Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH), a cash transfer program, on enrollment and child work among poor children in Ecuador. There are two main results. First, the BDH program had a large, positive impact on school enrollment, about 10 percentage points, and a large, negative impact on child work, about 17 percentage points. Second, the fact that some households believed that there was a school enrollment requirement attached to the transfers, even though such a requirement was never enforced or monitored in Ecuador, helps explain the magnitude of program effects.

Keywords: Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping; Primary Education; Land and Real Estate Development; Municipal Housing and Land; Real Estate Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-lam and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (89)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/wps3930.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wbk:wbrwps:3930

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().