Conditional cash transfers have been adopted by a large number of countries in the past decade. A... more Conditional cash transfers have been adopted by a large number of countries in the past decade. Although the impacts of these programs have been studied extensively, understanding of the economic mechanisms through which cash and conditions affect household decisions remains incomplete. This paper uses evidence from a program in Cambodia, where eligibility varied substantially among siblings in the same household, to illustrate these effects. A model of schooling decisions highlights three different effects of a child-specific conditional cash transfer: an income effect, a substitution effect, and a displacement effect. The model predicts that such a conditional cash transfer will increase enrollment This paper-a product of the Poverty and Inequality Team and the Human Development and Public Services Team, Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in the department to study the impact of social programs and their role in promoting human development. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank. org. The authors may be contacted at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] .
Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appe... more Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic status in early childhood for five Latin American countries. To help with comparability, we use the same measure of receptive language ability for all five countries. We find important differences in development in early childhood across countries, and steep socioeconomic gradients within every country. For the three countries where we can follow children over time, there are few substantive changes in scores once children enter school. Our results are robust to different ways of defining socioeconomic status, to different ways of standardizing outcomes, and to selective non-response on our measure of cognitive development.
ABSTRACT The impact of macroeconomic crises on the investments made by parents in the human capit... more ABSTRACT The impact of macroeconomic crises on the investments made by parents in the human capital of their children is a question of considerable policy importance. Analysis of the effects of the profound 1988--92 macroeconomic crisis in Peru on the schooling and employment decisions of school-age children in urban areas finds no effect on attendance rates but a significant decline in the fraction of children who are both employed and attend school. It also finds significantly higher mean educational attainment for children exposed to the crisis than for those who were not. These findings may be related: Children who are not employed have more time available and may therefore put more effort into school. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
ABSTRACT Despite progress in recent decades, a substantial fraction of children in developing cou... more ABSTRACT Despite progress in recent decades, a substantial fraction of children in developing countries attain little schooling, and many adults lack skills that are valued in the labor market. We evaluate the medium-term effects of a program that provided scholarships for three years to poor children upon graduation from elementary school in Cambodia, a low-income country. To do this we use a sharp regression discontinuity design. We show that scholarships have substantial effects on school attainment. By the time children would have been in grade 11 had they remained in school, two years after they stopped being eligible for scholarships, those who were offered scholarships have attained 0.6 more grades of completed schooling. Nevertheless, we find no evidence that scholarships had significant effects on test scores, employment, earnings, or the probability of getting married or having a child in adolescence.
The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great pol... more The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great policy importance. An attendant question is whether program effects are larger when transfers are "conditioned" on certain behaviors, such as a requirement that households enroll their ...
Numerous analysts have linked volunteering and participation to positive economic and political o... more Numerous analysts have linked volunteering and participation to positive economic and political outcomes. In this paper, I use the 1994 Peru LSMS to analyze volunteering patterns in rural Peru. The basic results of the paper are two. First, volunteers in rural Peru do not appear to have a low opportunity cost of time. They are more educated, and are more likely to hold a job. Other household characteristics, such as gender, marital status, length of residence, and ethnicity, are all important predictors of the probability of volunteering. Second, controlling for household characteristics, there are large differences across communities in aggregate volunteer levels. These differences do not seem to be related to differences in patterns of government expenditure. Many public programs, in rural Peru and elsewhere, ask that the intended beneficiaries "participate" as a means of building trust and social capital, increasing the sustainability of investments, and helping self-target investments to the poor. Volunteering may have important benefits in terms of building social capital, and encouraging greater ownership of development projects. The results in this paper suggest, however, that encouraging participation by potential beneficiaries is unlikely to be an effective form of self-targeting, since people with a higher opportunity cost of time volunteer more. Moreover, social programs which require participation may have difficulty reaching some particularly vulnerable groups, such as women or the illiterate.
The diffusion of cost-effective life saving technologies has reduced infant mortality in much of ... more The diffusion of cost-effective life saving technologies has reduced infant mortality in much of the developing world. Income gains may also play a direct, protective role in ensuring child survival, although the empirical findings to date on this issue have been mixed. This ...
This paper examines the relationship between early cognitive development, socio-economic status (... more This paper examines the relationship between early cognitive development, socio-economic status (SES), child health, and parenting quality in a developing country. We use a sample of over 3,000 predominantly poor pre-school age children from Ecuador, and analyze determinants of their scores on the Spanish version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (TVIP), a widely used test of language ability. We show that median age-normed test scores on the TVIP are much lower for older than younger children, and there is greater dispersion in scores among older children. We find that household socio-economic characteristics, in particular wealth and parental education, are "protective"-children from wealthier households and with more educated parents have higher scores. The associations of test scores with wealth and maternal education are larger for older children, suggesting that these factors have cumulative effects on cognitive ability. Last, we show that child health and measures of parenting quality are associated with performance on the TVIP. Children with lower hemoglobin levels perform worse on tests. Measures of parenting quality, in particular the degree to which parents are "responsive" and "harsh" toward children, and whether children are read to, account for a portion, although not the majority, of the association between SES and cognitive development.
... Subsequent directors were recruited from the private sector (Arturo Woodman, Alejandro Afuso)... more ... Subsequent directors were recruited from the private sector (Arturo Woodman, Alejandro Afuso) and from other branches of government (Manuel Es-tela, Manuel Vara Ochoa), which helped dispel some of the initial concerns. ...
The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great pol... more The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great policy importance. An attendant question is whether program effects are larger when transfers are "conditioned" on certain behaviors, such as a requirement that households enroll their children in school.
Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appe... more Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic status in early childhood for five Latin American countries. To help with comparability, we use the same measure of receptive language ability for all five countries. We find important differences in development in early childhood across countries, and steep socioeconomic gradients within every country. For the three countries where we can follow children over time, there are few substantive changes in scores once children enter school. Our results are robust to different ways of defining socioeconomic status, to different ways of standardizing outcomes, and to selective non-response on our measure of cognitive development.
Between 1992 and 1998 the Peruvian Social Fund (foncodes) spent about US$570 million funding micr... more Between 1992 and 1998 the Peruvian Social Fund (foncodes) spent about US$570 million funding microprojects throughout the country. Many of these projects involved constructing and renovating school facilities. This article uses data from foncodes, the 1993 population census in Peru, and a 1996 household survey conducted by the Peruvian Statistical Institute to analyze the targeting and impact of foncodes investments in education. A number of descriptive and econometric techniques are employed, including nonparametric regressions, differences in differences, and instrumental variables estimators. Results show that foncodes investments in school infrastructure have reached poor districts and poor households within those districts. The investments also appear to have had positive effects on school attendance rates for young children.
The effect of macroeconomic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. This ar... more The effect of macroeconomic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. This article analyzes the impact of a profound crisis in Peru on infant mortality. It finds an increase of about 2.5 percentage points in the infant mortality rate for children born during the crisis of the late 1980s, which implies that about 17,000 more children died than would have in the absence of the crisis. Accounting for the precise source of the increase in infant mortality is difficult, but it appears that the collapse in public and private expenditures on health played an important role.
... The shifts in Brazil's trading environment are mirrored in the increased import ... more ... The shifts in Brazil's trading environment are mirrored in the increased import penetration rate (imports as a percentage of output plus net imports) and export exposure (exports as a percentage of output).12 From 1987 to 1998 average import penetration increased from 5.7 ...
Does the sex composition of existing children in a family affect fertility behavior? An unusually... more Does the sex composition of existing children in a family affect fertility behavior? An unusually large data set, covering 64 countries and some 5 million births, is used to show that fertility behavior responds to the presence-or absence-of sons in many regions of the developing world. The response to the absence of sons is particularly large in Central Asia and South Asia. Modernization does not appear to reduce this differential response. For example, in South Asia the fertility response to the absence of sons is larger for women with more education and has been increasing over time. The explanation appears to be that a latent demand for sons is more likely to manifest itself when fertility levels are low. As a result of this differential fertility behavior, girls tend to grow up with significantly more siblings than do boys, with potential implications for their well-being when quantity -quality tradeoffs result in fewer material and emotional resources allocated to children in larger families. JEL codes: J16, J13, O15
Conditional cash transfers have been adopted by a large number of countries in the past decade. A... more Conditional cash transfers have been adopted by a large number of countries in the past decade. Although the impacts of these programs have been studied extensively, understanding of the economic mechanisms through which cash and conditions affect household decisions remains incomplete. This paper uses evidence from a program in Cambodia, where eligibility varied substantially among siblings in the same household, to illustrate these effects. A model of schooling decisions highlights three different effects of a child-specific conditional cash transfer: an income effect, a substitution effect, and a displacement effect. The model predicts that such a conditional cash transfer will increase enrollment This paper-a product of the Poverty and Inequality Team and the Human Development and Public Services Team, Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in the department to study the impact of social programs and their role in promoting human development. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank. org. The authors may be contacted at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] .
Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appe... more Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic status in early childhood for five Latin American countries. To help with comparability, we use the same measure of receptive language ability for all five countries. We find important differences in development in early childhood across countries, and steep socioeconomic gradients within every country. For the three countries where we can follow children over time, there are few substantive changes in scores once children enter school. Our results are robust to different ways of defining socioeconomic status, to different ways of standardizing outcomes, and to selective non-response on our measure of cognitive development.
ABSTRACT The impact of macroeconomic crises on the investments made by parents in the human capit... more ABSTRACT The impact of macroeconomic crises on the investments made by parents in the human capital of their children is a question of considerable policy importance. Analysis of the effects of the profound 1988--92 macroeconomic crisis in Peru on the schooling and employment decisions of school-age children in urban areas finds no effect on attendance rates but a significant decline in the fraction of children who are both employed and attend school. It also finds significantly higher mean educational attainment for children exposed to the crisis than for those who were not. These findings may be related: Children who are not employed have more time available and may therefore put more effort into school. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
ABSTRACT Despite progress in recent decades, a substantial fraction of children in developing cou... more ABSTRACT Despite progress in recent decades, a substantial fraction of children in developing countries attain little schooling, and many adults lack skills that are valued in the labor market. We evaluate the medium-term effects of a program that provided scholarships for three years to poor children upon graduation from elementary school in Cambodia, a low-income country. To do this we use a sharp regression discontinuity design. We show that scholarships have substantial effects on school attainment. By the time children would have been in grade 11 had they remained in school, two years after they stopped being eligible for scholarships, those who were offered scholarships have attained 0.6 more grades of completed schooling. Nevertheless, we find no evidence that scholarships had significant effects on test scores, employment, earnings, or the probability of getting married or having a child in adolescence.
The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great pol... more The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great policy importance. An attendant question is whether program effects are larger when transfers are "conditioned" on certain behaviors, such as a requirement that households enroll their ...
Numerous analysts have linked volunteering and participation to positive economic and political o... more Numerous analysts have linked volunteering and participation to positive economic and political outcomes. In this paper, I use the 1994 Peru LSMS to analyze volunteering patterns in rural Peru. The basic results of the paper are two. First, volunteers in rural Peru do not appear to have a low opportunity cost of time. They are more educated, and are more likely to hold a job. Other household characteristics, such as gender, marital status, length of residence, and ethnicity, are all important predictors of the probability of volunteering. Second, controlling for household characteristics, there are large differences across communities in aggregate volunteer levels. These differences do not seem to be related to differences in patterns of government expenditure. Many public programs, in rural Peru and elsewhere, ask that the intended beneficiaries "participate" as a means of building trust and social capital, increasing the sustainability of investments, and helping self-target investments to the poor. Volunteering may have important benefits in terms of building social capital, and encouraging greater ownership of development projects. The results in this paper suggest, however, that encouraging participation by potential beneficiaries is unlikely to be an effective form of self-targeting, since people with a higher opportunity cost of time volunteer more. Moreover, social programs which require participation may have difficulty reaching some particularly vulnerable groups, such as women or the illiterate.
The diffusion of cost-effective life saving technologies has reduced infant mortality in much of ... more The diffusion of cost-effective life saving technologies has reduced infant mortality in much of the developing world. Income gains may also play a direct, protective role in ensuring child survival, although the empirical findings to date on this issue have been mixed. This ...
This paper examines the relationship between early cognitive development, socio-economic status (... more This paper examines the relationship between early cognitive development, socio-economic status (SES), child health, and parenting quality in a developing country. We use a sample of over 3,000 predominantly poor pre-school age children from Ecuador, and analyze determinants of their scores on the Spanish version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (TVIP), a widely used test of language ability. We show that median age-normed test scores on the TVIP are much lower for older than younger children, and there is greater dispersion in scores among older children. We find that household socio-economic characteristics, in particular wealth and parental education, are "protective"-children from wealthier households and with more educated parents have higher scores. The associations of test scores with wealth and maternal education are larger for older children, suggesting that these factors have cumulative effects on cognitive ability. Last, we show that child health and measures of parenting quality are associated with performance on the TVIP. Children with lower hemoglobin levels perform worse on tests. Measures of parenting quality, in particular the degree to which parents are "responsive" and "harsh" toward children, and whether children are read to, account for a portion, although not the majority, of the association between SES and cognitive development.
... Subsequent directors were recruited from the private sector (Arturo Woodman, Alejandro Afuso)... more ... Subsequent directors were recruited from the private sector (Arturo Woodman, Alejandro Afuso) and from other branches of government (Manuel Es-tela, Manuel Vara Ochoa), which helped dispel some of the initial concerns. ...
The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great pol... more The impact of cash transfer programs on the accumulation of human capital is a topic of great policy importance. An attendant question is whether program effects are larger when transfers are "conditioned" on certain behaviors, such as a requirement that households enroll their children in school.
Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appe... more Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic status in early childhood for five Latin American countries. To help with comparability, we use the same measure of receptive language ability for all five countries. We find important differences in development in early childhood across countries, and steep socioeconomic gradients within every country. For the three countries where we can follow children over time, there are few substantive changes in scores once children enter school. Our results are robust to different ways of defining socioeconomic status, to different ways of standardizing outcomes, and to selective non-response on our measure of cognitive development.
Between 1992 and 1998 the Peruvian Social Fund (foncodes) spent about US$570 million funding micr... more Between 1992 and 1998 the Peruvian Social Fund (foncodes) spent about US$570 million funding microprojects throughout the country. Many of these projects involved constructing and renovating school facilities. This article uses data from foncodes, the 1993 population census in Peru, and a 1996 household survey conducted by the Peruvian Statistical Institute to analyze the targeting and impact of foncodes investments in education. A number of descriptive and econometric techniques are employed, including nonparametric regressions, differences in differences, and instrumental variables estimators. Results show that foncodes investments in school infrastructure have reached poor districts and poor households within those districts. The investments also appear to have had positive effects on school attendance rates for young children.
The effect of macroeconomic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. This ar... more The effect of macroeconomic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. This article analyzes the impact of a profound crisis in Peru on infant mortality. It finds an increase of about 2.5 percentage points in the infant mortality rate for children born during the crisis of the late 1980s, which implies that about 17,000 more children died than would have in the absence of the crisis. Accounting for the precise source of the increase in infant mortality is difficult, but it appears that the collapse in public and private expenditures on health played an important role.
... The shifts in Brazil's trading environment are mirrored in the increased import ... more ... The shifts in Brazil's trading environment are mirrored in the increased import penetration rate (imports as a percentage of output plus net imports) and export exposure (exports as a percentage of output).12 From 1987 to 1998 average import penetration increased from 5.7 ...
Does the sex composition of existing children in a family affect fertility behavior? An unusually... more Does the sex composition of existing children in a family affect fertility behavior? An unusually large data set, covering 64 countries and some 5 million births, is used to show that fertility behavior responds to the presence-or absence-of sons in many regions of the developing world. The response to the absence of sons is particularly large in Central Asia and South Asia. Modernization does not appear to reduce this differential response. For example, in South Asia the fertility response to the absence of sons is larger for women with more education and has been increasing over time. The explanation appears to be that a latent demand for sons is more likely to manifest itself when fertility levels are low. As a result of this differential fertility behavior, girls tend to grow up with significantly more siblings than do boys, with potential implications for their well-being when quantity -quality tradeoffs result in fewer material and emotional resources allocated to children in larger families. JEL codes: J16, J13, O15
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