Women's Power, Conditional Cash Transfers and Schooling in Nicaragua Staff Paper Series
نویسندگان
چکیده
The Red de Protección Social (RPS) in Nicaragua is one of a growing number of conditional cash transfer programs that pay households cash stipends in exchange for school attendance and regular visits to health clinics. A key feature of these programs is that the cash is given to the woman head of household. The rationale stems from previous research in the developing world that transfers to women are more likely to be spent on health, nutrition, and education of children and thus to reinforce the goals of these programs. One concern is that less powerful women may not be as impacted by program funds, because males in those household will decrease their contributions in response to the transfers. Utilizing randomized experimental data from RPS, we test for heterogeneous program impacts on school enrollment and spending based on a woman’s power as proxied by her education relative to her husband . Our results confirm previous findings that generally more household resources are devoted toward children when women are more powerful; however, when women’s power greatly exceeds her husband’s additional female power lowers school enrollment., Additionally we find that RPS’ impacts on schooling are substantially larger than expected income effects estimated from the control group, although we do not find evidence that female power alters RPS impacts on school enrollment. In terms of spending effects, RPS increased food and education expenditures in all households, yet this impact is attributable mostly to income effects. Finally, we find RPS had non-income impacts on milk expenditures particularly for less powerful women.. * Acknowledgements: We thank Michael Carter, Carolyn Heinrich, Jean-Paul Chavas, Jeremy Foltz and seminar participants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for their guidance and comments on earlier drafts. All errors remaining errors are our responsibility.
منابع مشابه
Heterogeneous Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers: Evidence from Nicaragua
Heterogeneous Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers: Evidence from Nicaragua In the last decade, the most popular policy tool used to increase human capital in developing countries has been the conditional cash transfer program. A large literature has shown significant mean impacts on schooling, health, and child labor. This paper examines heterogeneous effects using random-assignment data from...
متن کاملConditional Cash Transfers for Maternal Health Interventions: Factors Influencing Uptake in North-Central Nigeria
Background Nigeria accounts for a significant proportion of global maternal mortality figures with little progress made in curbing poor health indices. In a bid to reverse this trend, the Government of Nigeria initiated a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme to encourage pregnant women utilize services at designated health facilities. This study aims to understand experiences of women who ...
متن کاملThe Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers in Nicaragua on Consumption, Productive Investments, and Labor Allocation
متن کامل
The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfers on Consumption and Investment in Nicaragua by
This article examines the impact of a conditional cash transfer programme in Nicaragua on a range of consumption and productive investment measures. Programme effects are estimated using household panel data collected as part of a randomised evaluation. Despite clear evidence that the programme increased current expenditures, there is only limited evidence that it increased investment. An estim...
متن کاملCash Transfers and Child Schooling: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation of the Role of Conditionality
We conduct a randomized experiment in Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional (on enrollment and attendance) or unconditional. Results indicate that conditional and unconditional transfers have similar impacts increasing enrollment for children t...
متن کامل