Schooling Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers on Young Children

Evidence from Mexico

Bibliographic Data

ID4362573
AuthorsJere R Behrman (0000-0001-7835-6283, California University of Pennsylvania), Susan W Parker (0000-0001-5622-4220), Petra E Todd, Petra Todd (California University of Pennsylvania)
Year2009
Volume57
Issue3
Pages439-477
Publication date2009-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomic Development and Cultural Change (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0079 • E-ISSN: 1539-2988
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/596614
PMID20209076
OpenAlexW2088554422
LanguageEN
Citations received25
References cited34

This paper evaluates impacts of Oportunidades, a Mexican conditional cash transfer program, on educational outcomes 5.5 years after program initiation for a group of children who were age 0 to 8 years pre-program. The oldest children within this age range received educational scholarships. The youngest children did not receive the scholarships because they had not yet started the third grade of school (the initial grade for scholarships), but were beneficiaries of the program's health components that included nutritional supplements for children 24 months of age or younger. All of these children also may have benefitted more generally from increased household income resulting from the program. This paper investigates how the program differentially affected younger and older children within this age range and examines whether the early nutritional intervention led to improvements in subsequent educational performance. The program impact estimates are derived from a randomly assigned treatment and control group, which participated for different lengths of time in the program, and from a matched comparison group that had not participated prior to the collection of data in 2003. The empirical findings show positive program impacts on reducing ages at entering school for the younger children as well as on accumulated grades of schooling after 5.5 years of benefits for older children, with estimates implying a 1 percent reduction in the age of entry to primary and an increase in grades of schooling completed to date of about 8 to 9 percent

Cash · Cash transfers · Conditional cash transfer · Economic growth · Economics · Impact evaluation · Intervention (counseling) · Political science · Poverty · Program evaluation · Random assignment · Randomized experiment · Sociology · Treatment and control groups · Child Nutrition and Water Access · Demography · Finance · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Medicine · Nursing · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare · Psychology · Gerontology

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