Can Conditional Cash Transfers Compensate for a Father’s Absence?

Latin America

Colombia

Social Protection

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT)

Emla Fitzsimons and Alice Mesnard

2013

Fitzsimons, E. and A. Mesnard. Forthcoming. “Can Conditional Cash Transfers Compensate for a Father’s Absence?” World Bank Economic Review.
View publication

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2013

Familias en Acción

Not discussed in this paper, but based on Attanasio et al. (2010): 2001-ongoing

Not discussed in this paper, but based on Attanasio et al. (2010): To alleviate long-run poverty by fostering the accumulation of human capital among children living in indigent households and reduce current poverty through the transfer payment

Not discussed in this paper, but based on Attanasio et al. (2010): Implementation in 622 ‘municipalities’ in 26 ‘departments’ selected by Fondo de Inversiones para la Paz (FIP) on the basis of the following four criteria: 1) the municipality had to have access to basic education and health infrastructure; 2) the municipality had to have at least one bank; 3) the municipality had to have fewer than 100,000 inhabitants and not be the capital of a regional district and not be in the coffee region that received special help as a consequence of the 1995 earthquake; 4) the local authority had to register the municipality to the programmeme and provide a number of documents, including the lists of ‘SISBEN1’ (a basic welfare indicator more or less routinely collected for all families in Colombia) beneficiaries. All families registered with ‘SISBEN1’ in December 1999 in the targeted municipalities, and with children aged 0-17 years, were potential beneficiaries of the programmeme.

Not discussed in this paper, but based on Attanasio et al. (2010): The programmeme, implemented in rural areas, consists of conditional subsidies for investments into education, nutrition, and health. The nutrition component consists of a basic monetary supplement that is given to all beneficiary families with children aged less than 7 years. The health component consists of a vaccination and growth and development checks for children, and of courses on nutrition, hygiene and contraception for their mothers. Participation in this part of the programmeme is necessary in order to receive the nutritional supplement. With respect to the education component, subsidies, paid to the mother of the child(ren), are granted conditional on the child(ren) attending at least 80% of school classes. The amounts of the subsidy are 14,000 pesos (US$6.15) and 28,000 pesos (US$12.30) for children attending primary and secondary school, respectively.

• School Enrollment: a dummy taking the value 1 if the child was enrolled at the time of the survey
• Work as main activity: a dummy taking the value 1 if the child’s main activity in the week before the survey is reported to be work, household chores (paid and unpaid), or look for work.

Difference in difference

Sample: The final evaluation sample is made up of 122 municipalities, out of which 57 are treatment (phased in over two waves) and 65 are controls. In each municipality, approximately 100 eligible households were randomly sampled.
Identification strategy: Random allocation of the programme was not feasible, so for the purpose of the study it was decided to construct a representative stratified sample of treatment municipalities and to choose control municipalities among those that belonged to the same strata, were similar to treatment municipalities in terms of population, area, and quality of life, but that were excluded from the programme. The impact of the programme is estimated by using a difference-in-differences methodology combined with matching.
Survey: Baseline data collection was conducted between June and October 2002. A first wave of follow up data collection was collected one year later and a second wave of follow-up data was collected in 2006. Given the fact the in some municipalities the programme started before the baseline, the questionnaire included a number of retrospective modules in order to construct ‘pre-programme’ measurements for a large number of variables.

The authors show that departure of the father (due to death or divorce) decreases children’s school enrolment by around 5 percentage points, and increases child work by 3 percentage points. These detrimental effects of the departure of the father are largely offset by the cash transfer scheme. The authors provide extensive checks to show that children and households where the father does and does not leave are comparable in terms of baseline characteristics, pre-baseline trends in schooling and income, and attrition rates.

Child Labour

Households

National

The departure of the father (due to death or divorce) increases child work by 3 percentage points. This detrimental effect of the departure of the father is largely offset by the cash transfer scheme.

The departure of the father (due to death or divorce) decreases children’s school enrolment. This detrimental effect of the departure of the father is largely offset by the cash transfer scheme.

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