The HDN Social Safety Nets and Independent Evaluation Group Public Sector is pleased to sponsor a presentation by

Javier E. Baez, IEGPS

Authors:
Javier E. Baez (World Bank)
Adriana Camacho (Universidad de los Andes)

Abstract: 

Conditional cash transfers (CCT) are programs under which poor families get a stipend provided they keep their children in school and take them for health checks. While there is substantial evidence on their positive impacts on school participation, little is known about their long-term impacts on human capital accumulation. In this paper we investigate whether various cohorts of children from poor households that benefited up to nine years from Familias en Acción, a CCT in Colombia, attain more school and perform better in academic tests at the end of high school. Identification of program impacts is derived from two different strategies using matching techniques and regression discontinuity design with household surveys, a census of the poor and administrative data. We show that the program has positive effects on school attainment. Participant children are, on average, 4 to 8 percentage points more likely than nonparticipant children to finish high school, particularly girls and beneficiaries in rural municipalities. Regarding long-term impact on tests scores, the analysis shows that program recipients who graduate from high school seem to perform at the same level as equally poor non-recipient graduates in Mathematics, Spanish, or the overall test, even after correcting for possible selection bias when low-performing students enter school due to the program. The results are robust to a number of issues including the possibility of sorting around the threshold of eligibility, misspecification bias, and differences in the accuracy of data that could lead to spurious differences in test registration. Although the positive impacts on high school graduation may improve the employment and earning prospects of participants, the lack of positive effects on the test scores raises the need to further explore policy actions to couple CCT’s objective of increasing human capital with enhanced learning.

About the Presenter: 

Javier Baez is an Economist at the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank (IEGCG). He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) and Fellow of the Research Network on Population, Reproductive Health and Economic Development (PopPov). He recently published part of his doctoral research on the effects of conflicts in Africa on human capital in the Journal of Development Economics. Javier holds a PhD in Economics from the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University, a Masters in Public Administration and International Development from Harvard University, and B.A. and M.A. degrees in economics from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia.

Assessing the Long-term Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Human Capital: Evidence from Colombia (534kb pdf)
by Javier E. Baez and Adriana Camacho