[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp3658.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of a Cash Transfer Program on Cognitive Achievement: The Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador

Author

Listed:
  • Ponce, Juan

    (Flacso)

  • Bedi, Arjun S.

    (ISS, Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Abstract
Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in social policy. These programs aim to influence the accumulation of human capital, as well as reduce poverty. In terms of educational outcomes, a number of impact evaluation studies have shown that such programs have led to an increase in school enrollment, ensured regular school attendance and led to a reduction in child labor. Theoretically, such cash transfer programs may also be expected to exert a positive impact on students’ test scores, but related empirical evidence is scarce. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the impact of a cash transfer program, the Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador, on students’ cognitive achievements. The paper uses a regression discontinuity strategy to identify the impact of the program on second grade cognitive achievement. Regardless of the specification and the sample used, we find that there is no impact of the program on test scores, suggesting that attempts at building human capital, as measured by cognitive achievement, require additional and alternative interventions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ponce, Juan & Bedi, Arjun S., 2008. "The Impact of a Cash Transfer Program on Cognitive Achievement: The Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador," IZA Discussion Papers 3658, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3658
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp3658.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Caldes, Natalia & Coady, David & Maluccio, John A., 2006. "The cost of poverty alleviation transfer programs: A comparative analysis of three programs in Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 818-837, May.
    2. Sandra E. Black, 1999. "Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 577-599.
    3. Oosterbeek, Hessel & Ponce, Juan & Schady, Norbert, 2008. "The impact of cash transfers on school enrollment : evidence from Ecuador," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4645, The World Bank.
    4. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2004. "The Impact of Teacher Training on Student Achievement: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from School Reform Efforts in Chicago," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(1).
    5. Maluccio, John A. & Flores, Rafael, 2004. "Impact evaluation of a conditional cash transfer program," FCND briefs 184, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    6. James J. Heckman & Jora Stixrud & Sergio Urzua, 2006. "The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 411-482, July.
    7. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-529, October.
    8. Wilbert van der Klaauw, 2002. "Estimating the Effect of Financial Aid Offers on College Enrollment: A Regression-Discontinuity Approach," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1249-1287, November.
    9. Bedi, Arjun S. & Marshall, Jeffery H., 2002. "Primary school attendance in Honduras," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 129-153, October.
    10. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    11. Orazio Attanasio & Emla Fitzsimons & Ana Gómez & Martha Isabel Gutierrez & Costas Meghir & Alice Mesnard, 2006. "Child education and work choices in the presence of a conditional cash transfer programme in rural Colombia," IFS Working Papers W06/13, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    12. Bedard, Kelly & Ferrall, Christopher, 2003. "Wage and test score dispersion: some international evidence," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 31-43, February.
    13. Jinyong Hahn & Petra Todd & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 1999. "Evaluating the Effect of an Antidiscrimination Law Using a Regression-Discontinuity Design," NBER Working Papers 7131, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-209, January.
    15. Murnane, Richard J & Willett, John B & Levy, Frank, 1995. "The Growing Importance of Cognitive Skills in Wage Determination," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(2), pages 251-266, May.
    16. Rawlings, Laura B. & Rubio, Gloria M., 2003. "Evaluating the impact of conditional cash transfer programs : lessons from Latin America," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3119, The World Bank.
    17. Alderman, Harold, et al, 1996. "The Returns to Endogenous Human Capital in Pakistan's Rural Wage Labour Market," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 58(1), pages 29-55, February.
    18. Joshua D. Angrist & Victor Lavy, 1999. "Using Maimonides' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 533-575.
    19. Paul Schultz, T., 2004. "School subsidies for the poor: evaluating the Mexican Progresa poverty program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 199-250, June.
    20. Rose, Heather, 2006. "Do gains in test scores explain labor market outcomes?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 430-446, August.
    21. Boissiere, M & Knight, J B & Sabot, R H, 1985. "Earnings, Schooling, Ability, and Cognitive Skills," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(5), pages 1016-1030, December.
    22. Suzanne Duryea & Andrew Morrison, 2004. "The Effect of Conditional Transfers on School Performance and Child Labor: Evidence from an Ex-Post Impact Evaluation in Costa Rica," Research Department Publications 4359, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    23. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    24. Mauricio Leon & Stephen Younger, 2007. "Transfer payments, mothers' income and child health in ecuador," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(6), pages 1126-1143.
    25. Bedi, Arjun S & Marshall, Jeffrey H, 1999. "School Attendance and Student Achievement: Evidence from Rural Honduras," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(3), pages 657-682, April.
    26. Behrman, Jere R & Sengupta, Piyali & Todd, Petra, 2005. "Progressing through PROGRESA: An Impact Assessment of a School Subsidy Experiment in Rural Mexico," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(1), pages 237-275, October.
    27. Schady, Norbert & Araujo, Maria Caridad, 2006. "Cash transfers, conditions, school enrollment, and child work : evidence from a randomized experiment in Ecuador," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3930, The World Bank.
    28. Suzanne Duryea & Andrew Morrison, 2004. "The Effect of Conditional Transfers on School Performance and Child Labor: Evidence from an Ex-Post Impact Evaluation in Costa Rica," Research Department Publications 4359, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    29. Matsudaira, Jordan D., 2008. "Mandatory summer school and student achievement," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 829-850, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Frandsen, Brigham R. & Frölich, Markus & Melly, Blaise, 2012. "Quantile treatment effects in the regression discontinuity design," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 168(2), pages 382-395.
    2. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    3. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    4. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    5. Marinho Bertanha & Guido W. Imbens, 2020. "External Validity in Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 593-612, July.
    6. Bauer, Thomas K. & Bender, Stefan & Paloyo, Alfredo R. & Schmidt, Christoph M., 2012. "Evaluating the labor-market effects of compulsory military service," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 814-829.
    7. Marco Manacorda, 2012. "The Cost of Grade Retention," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(2), pages 596-606, May.
    8. Marcos Chamon & João Manoel Pinho de Mello & Sergio Firpo, 2008. "Electoral rules, political competition and fiscal spending : regression discontinuity evidence from Brazilian municipalities," Textos para discussão 559, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    9. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    10. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.
    11. DesJardins, Stephen L. & McCall, Brian P., 2014. "The impact of the Gates Millennium Scholars Program on college and post-college related choices of high ability, low-income minority students," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 124-138.
    12. Marcos Chamon & Sergio Firpo & João M. P. de Mello & Renan Pieri, 2019. "Electoral Rules, Political Competition and Fiscal Expenditures: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Brazilian Municipalities," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(1), pages 19-38, January.
    13. Jin-young Choi & Myoung-jae Lee, 2017. "Regression discontinuity: review with extensions," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1217-1246, December.
    14. Bertanha, Marinho, 2020. "Regression discontinuity design with many thresholds," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 218(1), pages 216-241.
    15. Perez-Reyna, David & Villamizar-Villegas, Mauricio, 2019. "Exchange rate effects of financial regulations," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 228-245.
    16. Guido Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2019. "Optimized Regression Discontinuity Designs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 264-278, May.
    17. Blaise Melly & Rafael Lalive, 2020. "Estimation, Inference, and Interpretation in the Regression Discontinuity Design," Diskussionsschriften dp2016, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    18. Holbein, John B. & Ladd, Helen F., 2017. "Accountability pressure: Regression discontinuity estimates of how No Child Left Behind influenced student behavior," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 55-67.
    19. Benavente, José Miguel & Crespi, Gustavo & Figal Garone, Lucas & Maffioli, Alessandro, 2012. "The impact of national research funds: A regression discontinuity approach to the Chilean FONDECYT," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(8), pages 1461-1475.
    20. José Miguel Benavente & Gustavo Crespi & Alessandro Maffioli, 2007. "The Impact of National Research Funds: An Evaluation of the Chilean FONDECYT," OVE Working Papers 0307, Inter-American Development Bank, Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    regression discontinuity; test scores; cash transfers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3658. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.