Ex-Ante Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs

The Case of Bolsa Escola

Bibliographic Data

ID19039232
AuthorsFrançois Bourguignon (0000-0002-3094-1827, Paris School of Economics), Francisco H G Ferreira (0000-0001-8926-0500, World Bank Group), Phillippe Leite (World Bank), Phillippe G Leite
Year2002
Publication date2002-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
PublisherWorld Bank, Washington, DC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1596/1813-9450-2916
OpenAlexW2131230096
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited9

Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities, are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design, such as benefit levels or the choice of the means-test, on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. This paper proposes a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior, based on microeconometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil's recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, the authors find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of current poverty and inequality levels

Conditional cash transfer · Economic growth · Economics · Ex-ante · Macroeconomics · Poverty · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access