Educational and child labour impacts of two food-for-education schemes: evidence from a randomised trial in rural Burkina Faso

Western Africa

Burkina Faso

Education

Food for education

H Kazianga, D De Walque, H Alderman

2012

Kazianga, Harounan, Damien de Walque, and Harold Alderman. “Educational and Child Labour Impacts of Two Food-for-Education Schemes: Evidence from a Randomised Trial in Rural Burkina Faso.” Journal of African economies 21.5 (2012): 723–760.
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Primary data is available at: https://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/2980.

2012

N. A.

2006–2007 (baseline and endline surveys)

The objective of the paper is to assess the relationship between FFE (food for education) programs and enrolment, attendance, academic performance, and cognitive development.

The focus of the study is the Sahel region of northern Burkina Faso in West Africa. Northern Burkina Faso is an appropriate context to evaluate the impact of FFE programs for two main reasons. First, the region has some of the world’s lowest primary school participation. On average, only 20% of school-age children (6–16 years old) attend school, based on national surveys. Second, income levels are very low and severe food shortages are frequent.

Two food-for-education programs are analyzed. The first provides school meals where students are given lunch each school day the second provides take-home rations which give girls 10 kg of cereal flour each month, conditional on a 90% attendance rate. The experiment consisted in randomly assigning these schools to three groups: 16 schools to school meals, 16 schools to THRs (take-home rations), and 14 schools to a control group. The randomization took place after a baseline survey in June 2006. The programme was implemented in the following academic year (i.e., 2006–2007) and a follow-up survey was fielded in June 2007 at the end of that academic year.

• School Enrollment
• School Attendance
• Academic Performance, Cognitive Development

RCT

Study design: the study uses an experimental, prospective randomized design in which villages are randomly assigned to treatment and control groups and data are collected before the interventions are rolled out and after the interventions have been implemented. The identification strategy relies on the random assignment of the villages to treatment and control groups. The main assumption is that the outcomes of interest would have remained identical across these groups if the programme has not been implemented. Differences observed across the groups in the follow-up survey can be attributed to the programme. Because the programme was offered at the village level, the authors estimate the average intent to treat (IIT) effect, that is, the impact of the programme, on average, for all children in a given age range within a village whether or not all children in the village were receiving the treatment. This estimate measures the average programme impact on eligible individuals (i.e., the intervention\'s impact instead of the treatment\'s impact).
Sample: a random sample of 48 households around each school, making a total of 2,208 households, having a total of about 4,236 school-age children (i.e., aged between 6 and 15).2 There are about 1,493 students in the school meals villages, 1,498 in the THR villages, and 1,245 in the control villages.
Survey Instrument: the authors collected information on household background, household wealth, and school participation for all children, as well as anthropometric data. In both rounds of the survey, all school-age children were asked to solve simple mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). In the follow-up round, formal cognitive tests were administered, including Raven’s colored progressive matrices tests and forward and backward digit span tests to measure the program’s impact on cognitive development and short-term memory.

After the programs ran for one academic year, school enrolment increased by 3–5 percentage points. The scores on mathematics improved for girls in both school meals and take-home rations villages. Conditional on enrolment, the interventions caused attendance to decrease, but this was mainly driven by lower attendance among new enrolees. The interventions also led to an adjustment in child labour, with children (especially girls) with access to food-for-education programs, in particular the take-home rations, shifting away from on-farm labour and off-farm productive tasks which possibly are more incompatible with school hours

Child Labour

Households

Local

A food for educationprogram in Burkina Faso led to an adjustment in child labour, with children (especially girls) with access to food-for-education programs, in particular the take-home rations, shifting away from on-farm labour and off-farm productive tasks which possibly are more incompatible with school hours.

After the programs ran for one academic year, school enrolment increased by 3–5 percentage points. The scores on mathematics improved for girls in both school meals and take-home rations villages. Conditional on enrolment, the interventions caused attendance to decrease, but this was mainly driven by lower attendance among new enrolees.

N. A.