A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Educational Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers

Zhi Zheng Chong and Siew Yee Lau

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In this review of the educational impact of unconditional cash transfer programmes (UCTs), we systematically search the impact evaluation literature and find 38 papers that evaluate 22 programmes in 18 countries. We quantitatively synthesise the reported effect sizes from these papers using a random-effects meta-analysis model and find a statistically significant positive impact on both enrolment and attendance, suggesting that UCTs are an effective social intervention for policymakers aiming to improve educational attainment. In line with previous research syntheses of cash transfer programmes, we also find significant heterogeneity in effect sizes across studies, which we attempt to explain in a meta-regression with two programme design features and two country-specific characteristics. The results suggest that transfer size and whether the programme is a pilot are irrelevant to UCT impact. We also find no moderating effects of income per capita and the proportion of people living in poverty in the economy, lending no support to a recently developed theoretical framework for UCTs. The findings and limitations of the systematic review and meta-analysis yield three recommendations for future UCT evaluations.

Keywords: Cash transfer programmes; unconditional cash transfers; education; impact evaluation; systematic review; meta-analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/113587/1/META%20ANALYSIS.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/120837/1/MPRA_paper_120837.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/121778/1/MPRA_paper_121778.pdf revised version (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:pra:mprapa:113587

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().