Conditional cash transfer and child labour: the case of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Programme in Ghanaonal cash transfer and child labour: the case of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Programme in Ghana

Western Africa

Ghana

Social Protection

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT)

R Ayifah

2015

Ayfah, R (2015). Conditional Cash Transfer and Child Labour: The Case of the Livelihood. Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Programme in Ghana. PhD Thesis. Available at: http://www.ucw-project.org/.
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Secondary Data: Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER). https://www.poverty-action.org/organization/institute-statistical-social-and-economic-research-isser.

2015

Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP)

2010-2012 (baseline and endline surveys)

The aim of the LEAP is alleviation of short term poverty and the development of the human capital of beneficiary members in the long term.

The LEAP programme is targeted at households that fall into the extreme poverty definition and in addition have a member who fall into three main demographic characteristics: a single parent with orphans and vulnerable child (OVC); poor elderly person (over 65 years) or someone with extreme disability who cannot work.

Selections of households followed three processes for the implementation of the LEAP program. The first is based on the poverty indicators among the various districts, the poorest districts are selected to benefit from the program. Selected districts then form District LEAP Implementation committee (DLIC) who then select communities from the districts to benefit from the LEAP. The selection of the communities takes into account prevalence of health conditions (incidence of guinea worm, buruli ulcer and HIV/AIDS), National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) registration level, availability and access to quality social services, prevalence of child labour and child trafficking as well as the geographical isolation of the community. However, there is no consistent weighting method for these factors. The Community LEAP Implementation Committees (CLICs) are then formed in the selected communities to select eligible households. According to the LEAP operational manual the CLIC are supposed to present the list of selected beneficiary households and methodology for the selection to the community members so that they can make suggestions on the inclusion or exclusion of certain households. The program is unconditional for elderly persons over 65 years and persons with extreme disability but continuous receipt of the cash dependent on having a health insurance card. For single parents who take care of orphans and vulnerable children, they must adhere to certain behavioural conditions including: i) enrolment and retention of all school age children in school; ii) birth registration of new born babies and their attendance at postnatal clinics ; iii) full vaccination of children up to the age of five; iv) non trafficking of children and their non-participation in the worst form of child labour.

• Child labour
• School enrollment

Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences

Study design: the author employs the nearest neighbour matching approach combined with difference-in-differences, which allos to control for selection bias resulting from both observables and unobservables factors associated with the selection of participants into the LEAP programme as well as the child labour supply. The matching allowed the author to get valid control households that are similar to the LEAP recipients; while the difference-in-difference method takes care of unobservable characteristics.
Sample: in 2010, baseline information on 699 future LEAP beneficiary households were collected as part of a nation-wide representative household survey. It consisted of 5,009 households with 3,136 of these households located in rural areas. A follow up survey was conducted among the LEAP beneficiaries and the control households after 2 years (i.e. in 2012). Though, 1,613 households (699 in the treated and 914 in the control samples) were targeted to be followed in 2012 survey, a total of 1,504 of these households were actually re-interviewed with attrition rate of about 8%.
Survey Instrument: both surveys focused on households’ demographic and geographic characteristics as well as community characteristics. Households’ use of children in farming activities were also identified.

The cash transfer scheme had no effect on participation of children in farming but it led to a reduction in the hours of work per day.

Child Labour

Households

National

The cash transfer scheme had no effect on participation of children in farming but it led to a reduction in the hours of work per day in Ghana.

The largest effect of the scheme occurs in extremely poor households with 2.7 hours reduction in the hours of work per day. But the program had no effect on both participation and hours of work in male headed and poor households. In addition to the LEAP, other factors such as debt owing status, household size and receipt of remittance also affect child labour supply.

In addition to the LEAP, the author suggests that other factors such as debt owing status, household size and receipt of remittance also affect child labour supply. Disaggregated results show that targeting of the scheme might work better if focused more on extremely poor and female headed households.