Lighten the Burden: Assessing the Impact of a for-Poor-Students Cash Transfer Program on Spending Behaviour

Arif Anindita and Gumilang Aryo Sahadewo

Journal of Development Studies, 2020, vol. 56, issue 7, 1367-1383

Abstract: The Indonesian Government launched a for-poor students cash transfer program (Bantuan Siswa Miskin, BSM) to aid poor students in attaining goods and services that would improve school attendance. Recipients should spend the cash to support school attendance, however, the government does not have any control on how households spend the transfer. Using the Indonesian Family Life Survey, we evaluate whether the BSM program affects education spending. To deal with the issues of endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity, we use the BSM eligibility criteria set by the government as instrumental variables and the first-difference estimation strategy. We find that BSM has a significant and positive effect on education spending. This study provides evidence that households use the transfer according to the intended purpose even though there is no formal mechanism to ensure households’ compliance.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2019.1677888 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jdevst:v:56:y:2020:i:7:p:1367-1383

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2019.1677888

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().