Publication: Civil Conflict and Conditional Cash Transfers: Effects on Demobilization
Loading...
Files in English
574 downloads
Published
2017-11
ISSN
0305-750X
Date
2018-01-18
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Cash transfer programs have been successful in helping millions of people afford better livelihoods. While this is well known, little research has yet been conducted to examine the power of such programs to influence outcomes in times of conflict, especially in countries where anti-poverty programs are implemented amidst disputes against illegal armed groups. This paper focuses on the implementation of Familias en Accion, a flagship anti-poverty cash transfer program in Colombia, during the early 2000s when the country was still experiencing its long-lasting internal conflict. Impact evaluations have already shown the important effects of this program on household poverty levels and children’s time allocation, including a higher incidence of school attendance and a lower incidence of child labor. Our hypothesis here is that such outcomes imply changes in the dynamics of the civil conflict, since 50% of the demobilised combatants are children mostly eligible for the transfers. We take advantage of a natural experiment that occurred during the first stage of implementation of the program in the period 2001–04 when the transfers were gradually rolled out across eligible municipalities. By setting out a difference-in-differences approach, our results indicate that the program had positive effects on the demobilization of combatants. These findings are observed for a length of three years since the program started.
Link to Data Set
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Examining Conditional Cash Transfer Programs : A Role for Increased Social Inclusion?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-06)Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) provide money to poor families contingent upon certain verifiable actions, generally minimum investments in children s human capital such as regular school attendance or basic preventative health care. They therefore hold promise for addressing the inter-generational transmission of poverty and fostering social inclusion by explicitly targeting the poor, focusing on children, delivering transfers to women, and changing social accountability relationships between beneficiaries, service providers and governments. CCT programs are at the forefront of applying new social policy theories and program administration practices. They address demand-side barriers, have a synergistic focus on investments in health, education and nutrition, and combine short-term transfers for income support with incentives for long-run investments in human capital. They also are public sector leaders in program administration, using modern targeting, registering, and monitoring systems along with strategic evaluations. Their impact depends on the supply of quality, accessible health and education services and may increase with strengthened links to the labor market, and a greater focus on early childhood and transient support to households facing shocks. CCT programs are facing a number of challenges as they evolve, from reaching vulnerable groups to fostering transparency and accountability, especially at the community level. Centralized programs have been criticized for limiting the engagement of local governments and civil society and it is clear that in limited capacity environments, a greater reliance on communities is warranted. In sum, though promising, these programs are not a panacea against social exclusion and should form part of comprehensive social and economic policy strategies and be applied carefully in different policy contexts.Publication Evaluating the Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2005-03-01)Several developing economies have recently introduced conditional cash transfer programs, which provide money to poor families contingent on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital, such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers. The approach is both an alternative to more traditional social assistance programs and a demand-side complement to the supply of health and education services. Unlike most development initiatives, conditional cash transfer programs have been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness using experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Evaluation results for programs launched in Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Turkey reveal successes in addressing many of the failures in delivering social assistance, such as weak poverty targeting, disincentive effects, and limited welfare impacts. There is clear evidence of success from the first generation of programs in Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua in increasing enrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raising household consumption. Many questions remain unanswered, however, including the potential of conditional cash transfer programs to function well under different conditions, to address a broader range of challenges among poor and vulnerable populations, and to prevent the intergenerational transmission of poverty.Publication PKH Conditional Cash Transfer(World Bank, Jakarta, 2012-02)This is a first for Indonesia: Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH) is the only household-targeted social assistance initiative to have designed randomized impact evaluation into the initial allocation of the program. This brings three major benefits for policymakers: 1) the evidence available for evaluating the impacts of the PKH program on household welfare is extensive and sound; 2) the program design and the impact analysis design have generated additional excitement, both nationally and internationally, about the program, its goals and social assistance initiatives in general; and 3) the results and underlying data will be made publicly available, which has already spurred interest in additional evaluations that will stock the shelves of social assistance policy research libraries. PKH's success in delivering real benefits to the very poor and in changing behaviors deserves further support and encouragement. PKH's initial weaknesses in implementation and delivery deserve continuing attention and thoughtful solutions for greater effectiveness. The Government of Indonesia (GOI) plans on expanding the PKH program to as many as three million households; while it is doing so, it should continue to refine implementation, coordinate and collaborate with affiliated service providers in health, education, and local government services, and continue developing a corps of organized, enthusiastic, and skilled facilitators who can assist very poor households in achieving healthier behaviors.Publication Evaluating the Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs : Lessons from Latin America(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08)Unlike most development initiatives, conditional cash transfer programs recently introduced in the Latin America and the Caribbean region have been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness. These programs provide money to poor families, conditional on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital-such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers on a regular basis. Rawlings and Rubio review the experience in evaluating the impact of these programs, exploring the application of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation methods and summarizing results from programs launched in Brazil, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Evaluation results from the first generation of programs in Brazil, Mexico, and Nicaragua show that conditional cash transfer programs are effective in promoting human capital accumulation among poor households. There is clear evidence of success in increasing enrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raising household consumption. Despite this promising evidence, many questions remain unanswered about the impact of conditional cash transfer programs, including those concerning their effectiveness under different country conditions and the sustainability of the welfare impacts.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.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Taxes, Spending, and Equity: International Patterns and Lessons for Developing Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-17)Taxes and public spending underpin the basic administration of government and finance the human capital and infrastructure investments needed for economic growth. They can also have a significant and immediate impact on poverty and inequality. The question of how public finance can support longer-term growth objectives while promoting equity has become even more important in recent years, given the high fiscal deficits and debt levels most countries emerged with in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the increasing cost of debt and the need to restart environmentally sustainable growth while helping households address the learning losses and other social scars caused by the pandemic. This paper examines the global evidence on which households pay which taxes and who benefits from what spending, and critically, the net effect on different households across the income distribution. The aim is to identify the patterns and lessons that emerge for designing progressive fiscal policies. A global dataset of 96 countries is assembled, spanning all regions of the world and all national income levels, grounded in the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) approach to fiscal incidence.Publication Novissi Togo(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-09-27)This case study, jointly authored by the Government of Togo and the World Bank, documents the innovative features of the NOVISSI program and posits some directions for the way forward. The study examines how Togo leveraged artificial intelligence and machine learning methods to prioritize the rural poor in the absence of a shock-responsive social protection delivery system and a dynamic social registry. It also discusses the main challenges of the model and the risks and implications of implementing such a program.Publication Africa's Pulse, No. 24, October 2021(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-10-06)In 2021, Sub-Saharan Africa emerged from the recession, but its recovery is still timid and fragile. The region is projected to grow at a rate of 3.3 percent—a weaker pace of recovery than that of advanced and emerging market economies. In 2022–23, the region is projected to grow at rates below 4 percent; however, growth above 5 percent is attainable with rapid vaccine deployment in the region and thereby withdrawal of COVID-19 containment measures. In response to the pandemic, African countries are undertaking structural and economic reforms. Countries have been relatively disciplined on monetary and fiscal policies. However, limited fiscal space is handicapping African countries in injecting the fiscal resources required to launch a vigorous policy response to COVID-19.Accelerating the economic recovery in the region would require significant additional externalfinancing, in addition to rapid deployment of the vaccine. Africa’s unique conditions, such as low baseline development, preexisting climate vulnerabilities, low use of fossil fuel energy, and high reliance on climate-sensitive agriculture, pose additional challenges from climate change, but also provide opportunities to build and use greener technologies. Climate change should be considered by policymakers as a source of structural change. For instance, the energy access problem in the region can be solved by the adoption of renewable energy alongside expansion of the national grid. Policy makers need domestic and international financing to create new jobs—including green jobs. For example, in a region where much of the infrastructure, cities, and transportation systems are yet to be built, investments in climate-smart infrastructure can help cities create jobs. In resource-rich countries, wealth exposure to carbon risk can be reduced by fostering asset diversification that supports human and renewable natural capital accumulation. Financing climate change adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa is essential, and policies to mobilize resources are critical to create more, better, and sustainable jobs.Publication Conducting Classroom Observations(Washington, DC, 2015)The ‘Stallings classroom snapshot’ instrument, technically called the ‘Stanford Research Institute classroom observation system’ was developed by Professor Jane Stallings for research on the efficiency and quality of basic education teachers in the United States in the 1970s. The Stallings instrument generates robust quantitative data on the interaction of teachers and students in the classroom, with a high degree of inter-rater reliability (0.8 or higher) among observers with relatively limited training, which makes it suitable for large scale samples in developing country settings. Key features of the Stallings instrument make it well-suited to large scale use in developing country contexts. However, several factors need to borne in mind when interpreting its results. First, there is clear potential for Hawthorne effects, as teachers are aware of the observer (and sometimes pair of observers) physically present in the classroom, unlike the latest observation methods being used in the United States, which place a video camera in the classroom for extended periods so as to minimize these effects. One operating assumption, therefore, is that Stallings observations capture teachers’ performing at their very best, or production possibility frontier, which is in fact useful to measure. A second issue is the potential noisiness of the variables being measured; if the same teacher were observed on different days or with different student sections on the same day or with a different cohort of students the following year, how consistent would the measured performance be? Initial studies in the US called for visits to each classroom on two different days. Third issue is the non-random assignment of teachers to classes in most of the school systems observed. Even when students are not explicitly ability-tracked, classroom assignment rules may de facto result in some teachers facing much more gifted or docile students than others. Finally, what makes the Stallings instrument versatile and robust across different grades, subjects, languages and countries is that it does not try to measure the content of what is being taught, either the depth or sophistication of the curriculum content itself or the teacher’s mastery of that content.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.