The impact of Zambia’s unconditional child grant on schooling and work: results from a large-scale social experiment

Africa

Zambia

Social Protection

Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT)

S Handa, L Natali, D Seidenfeld, et al

2016

Handa, Sudhanshu, et al. “The Impact of Zambia’s Unconditional Child Grant on Schooling and Work: Results from a Large-Scale Social Experiment.” Journal of Development Effectiveness 8.3 (2016): 346–367.
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Secondary Data: Government of Zambia’s Child Grant Program (CGP). Questionnaires and reports for the CGP are available on the Transfer Project website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/transfer).

2016

Government of Zambia’s Child Grant Program (CGP)

2010-2013

The primary objectives of the program are to address young child health and nutrition and household food security, secondary outcomes relate to asset building, and economic strengthening. This study aims to examine if the program has an impact on the schooling and work of school-age children who in principle are not the main target population of the program.

Households with at least one child under 3 years old in the study Communities.

The program offers unconditional cash transfers targeted to households with children under the age of 3 years in three districts of Zambia.

• Schooling
• Child work

RCT

Study design: The Ministry conducted the first step of the randomization process by selecting and ordering 30 CWACs (Community Welfare Assistance Committees) within each district (out of roughly 100 CWACs in each district) through a lottery system. After the 90 CWACs were randomly selected (30 from each district) for the study, CWAC members and Ministry staff identified all eligible households, namely households with at least one child under 3 years old, in the study communities. Among all eligible households in each CWAC, 28 households were randomly sampled for inclusion in the study. Baseline data were collected for the 28 randomly sampled households in each randomly selected CWAC in each district (30 CWACs per district) and located in one of the three geographically targeted districts
Sample: the final study sample size was just over 2500 households.
Survey Instrument: The core survey instrument used in each round is a household questionnaire, though a community questionnaire was also administered in each wave to gather information on local prices, shocks, and other contextual characteristics; a health facility questionnaire was also administered at baseline. The household survey is multi-topic and very similar, both in layout and coverage, to two national surveys (the Living Conditions and Monitoring Survey – LCMS; and the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey – ZDHS). The questionnaire contained detailed modules on consumption, household assets and conditions,

health, education, productive activities, early child development, subjective poverty and food security, and anthropometric measurements among others. The main respondent to the household questionnaire is typically the intended CGP recipient, the primary caregiver of young children, virtually all of whom are women.

The program has no discernible impact on the school enrolment of children aged 7–14. However, when the authors examine the sample of older and younger children – based on the grade structure of the Zambian schooling system – they find a significant impact among children aged 11–14, which coincided with the exact age range where sharp drop-out begins to occur in Zambia with point estimates in the range of 7–8 percentage points. For older children, a key barrier is the time-cost of school attendance in terms of income foregone. The program reduced work-for-pay among children 11–14 suggesting that alleviating the opportunity cost of schooling is another pathway through which the program facilitates school enrolment.

Child Labour

Households

National

The program reduced work-for-pay among children 11–14 suggesting that alleviating the opportunity cost of schooling is another pathway through which the program facilitates school enrolment.

The program has no discernible impact on the school enrolment of children aged 7–14. However, when the authors examine the sample of older and younger children – based on the grade structure of the Zambian schooling system – they find a significant impact among children aged 11–14, which coincided with the exact age range where sharp drop-out begins to occur in Zambia with point estimates in the range of 7–8 percentage points. For older children, a key barrier is the time-cost of school attendance in terms of income foregone. The program reduced work-for-pay among children 11–14 suggesting that alleviating the opportunity cost of schooling is another pathway through which the program facilitates school enrolment.

Households in the CGP spend more on education, and in particular, on uniforms and shoes, two items cited as key barriers to school enrolment in study areas.