Publication: Effects over the Life of a Program: Evidence from an Education Conditional Cash Transfer Program for Girls
Date
2019-12
ISSN
Published
2019-12
Author(s)
Abstract
While most evaluations of education
programs in developing countries examine effects one or two
years after a program has been introduced, this study does
so over an extended duration of a program. Administered in
Punjab, Pakistan, the program offers cash benefits to
households conditional on girls' regular attendance in
secondary grades in government schools. The study evaluates
the evolution of the program's effects on girls'
secondary school enrollment numbers over roughly a decade of
its existence. The program was targeted to districts with
low adult literacy rates, a targeting mechanism that
provides an observed, numerical program assignment variable
and results in a cutoff value. Recent advances in regression
discontinuity designs allow the study to appropriately fit
key features of the data. The study finds that the program
had positive effects on girls’ secondary school enrollment
numbers throughout the period and that these effects were
stable. This pattern is observed despite a loss of more than
60 percent in the real value of the cash benefit over the
period. The findings are consistent with potential
behavioral explanations, such as the program making
girls' education salient to households or catalyzing a
shift in social norms around girls' education.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Chhabra, Esha; Najeeb, Fatima; Raju, Dhushyanth. 2019. Effects over the Life of a Program: Evidence from an Education Conditional Cash Transfer Program for Girls. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9094. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33102 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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