An impact evaluation of the conditional cash transfers to education in prafan experimental approach

Resumo

This paper uses data from a social experiment in Honduras to estimate the educational impact on children participating in PRAF II, a social program that has two components: demand-side intervention – conditional cash transfers to families whose children are attending school on a regular basis – and supply-side intervention - cash transfers to improve the quality of the schools. The results of the difference-in-differences and cross-sectional regressions indicate that the conditional cash transfers increase school attendance and reduce drop out rates; but they show no impact whatsoever from the supply-side intervention. The results of a Markov schooling transition model, used to assess the impact of the demand-side intervention, show that the program effectively facilitates progression through the grades. When we used a simulation method to evaluate the long-term impact of exposure to the program and a bootstrap method to test the statistical significance of our estimations, we found that if children were to participate in the program between the ages of 6 and 12, they would experience an improvement equivalent to 0.76 years in their average education level, and 35% more children would finish primary school. One notable result is that the conditional transfers have a significant impact on the poor, but have no impact on those who are not poor. Furthermore, the program was seen to reduce educational inequalities between rural and urban areas.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Dissertação

Ano

2005

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/79

Temas

Economia

Palavras-chave

Conditional Cash TransfersEducational ImpactExperimental EvaluationEducational InequalitiesEconomiaAvaliação de pesquisa (Programas de ação social) - HondurasHonduras - Política social