Publication: Cash Transfers, Children and the Crisis : Protecting Current and Future Investments
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Date
2011
ISSN
09506764
Published
2011
Author(s)
Srinivasan, Santhosh
Editor(s)
Abstract
In a mix of responses to the food, fuel, and financial crises of 2008-9, some developing countries have introduced new safety-net programmes, while others have modified and/or expanded existing ones. Many have introduced conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in recent years, and these have been used as an important starting point for a response. This article aims to describe these various experiences with CCTs, to distil lessons about their effectiveness as crisis-response programmes for households with children, to identify design features that can facilitate their ability to respond to transient poverty shocks, and to assess how they can complement other safety-net programmes.
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Publication Cash Transfers, Children and the Crisis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06)Developing countries have responded to the multiple shocks from the food, fuel and finance crises of 2008-2009 with a mix of responses aimed at both mitigating the immediate impacts of the crises on households (and particularly children), and protecting future investments in human capital. While some countries have introduced new safety net programs, others have modified and/or expanded existing ones. Since many countries have introduced conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in recent years, these programs have been used as an important starting point for a response. This paper aims to describe how conditional cash transfers have been used by different countries to respond to the crises (e.g. by expanding coverage and/or increasing benefit amounts), distill lessons about their effectiveness as crisis-response programs, identify design features that can facilitate their ability to respond to transient poverty shocks, and assess how they can complement other safety net programs.Publication Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009)The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries. Offsetting adjustments that could have blunted the impact of transfers, such as reductions in the labor market participation of beneficiaries, have been relatively modest. Moreover, CCT programs often have provided an entry point to reforming badly targeted subsidies and upgrading the quality of safety nets. The report thus argues that CCTs have been an effective way to redistribute income to the poor, while recognizing that even the best-designed and best-managed program cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. CCTs therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs and social pensions. The report also considers the rationale for conditioning the transfers on the use of specific health and education services by program beneficiaries. Conditions can be justified if households are under investing in the human capital of their children, for example, if they hold incorrect beliefs about the returns to these investments; if there is "incomplete altruism" between parents and their children; or if there are large externalities to investments in health and education. Political economy considerations also may favor conditional over unconditional transfers: taxpayers may be more likely to support transfers to the poor if they are linked to efforts to overcome poverty in the long term, particularly when the efforts involve actions to improve the welfare of children.Publication Conditional Cash Transfers and Female Schooling : The Impact of the Female School Stipend Programme on Public School Enrolments in Punjab, Pakistan(2010)Instead of mean-tested Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes, some countries have implemented gender-targeted CCTs to explicitly address intra-household disparities in human capital investments. This study focuses on addressing the direct impact of a female school stipend programme in Punjab, Pakistan--Did the intervention increase female enrolment in public schools? To address this question, we draw upon data from the provincial school censuses 2003 and 2005. We estimate the net growth in female enrolments in grade 6-8 in stipend eligible schools. Impact evaluation analysis, including difference-and-difference (DD), triple differencing (DDD) and regression-discontinuity design (RDD), indicate a modest but statistically significant impact of the intervention. The preferred estimator derived from a combination of DDD and RDD empirical strategies suggests that the average programme impact between 2003 and 2005 was an increase of six female students per school in terms of absolute change and an increase of 9% in female enrolment in terms of relative change. A triangulation effort is also undertaken using two rounds of a nationally representative household survey before and after the intervention. Even though the surveys are not representative at the sub-provincial level, the results corroborate evidence of the impact using school census data.Publication Making Services Work : Indicators, Assessments, and Benchmarking of the Quality and Governance of Public Service Delivery in the Human Development Sectors(2011-06-01)Improving governance is central to improving results in human development. It is clear that money is not enough: improved outcomes from service delivery require better governance, including mechanisms for holding service providers accountable and appropriate incentives for performance. There is therefore a growing demand for indicators to measure how and whether these processes work, and how they affect health and education results. This paper makes the case for measuring governance policies and performance, and the quality of service delivery in health and education. It develops a framework for selecting and measuring a set of indicators and proposes options, drawing from new and innovative measurement tools and approaches. The paper proposes the adoption of a more systematic approach that will both facilitate the work of health and education policymakers and allow for cross-country comparisons and benchmarking.Publication Can Drought Increase Total Calorie Availability? The Impact of Drought on Food Consumption and the Mitigating Effects of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program(2010)This study uses the panel data of a randomized experiment from the Mexican PROGRESA program to evaluate the impact of drought on total calorie availability and the mitigating effects of PROGRESA on food consumption in periods of drought. Drought reduced total expenditures and total food expenditures but increased the total availability of calories. This paradox can be explained by the impact of drought on the composition of calories; that is, it reduced the consumption of expensive calories in such foods as vegetables, fruits, and animal products but increased calories consumed from cheaper sources, such as grains. This study finds that PROGRESA can completely mitigate the negative effects of drought on calorie availability from vegetables, fruits, and other sources. However, PROGRESA cannot mitigate the impact of drought on calories available from grains. The analysis also shows that, during drought, households who increase their consumption of grains get them mainly from purchased sources rather than from home production. In these circumstances, decreased total expenditures and increased purchases of grains suggest that grains are inferior goods in rural Mexico. The Engel curve analysis further proves that grains are inferior goods.
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