The Short Term Impact of a Productive Asset Transfer in Families with Child labour: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines

South-East Asia

Philippines

Labour Market

Asset transfer

EV Edmonds, CB Theogarides

2019

Edmonds, Eric, and Caroline Theoharides. “The Short Term Impact of a Productive Asset Transfer in Families with Child Labor: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines.” Journal of Development Economics 146 (2020).
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Data is available on the journal’s website. Questionnaires are available at: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/eedmonds/kasama/.

2020

Kasama

April/2016-June/2018 (baseline and endline)

Examine the effects of asset transfers on adolescents and their families in settings where child labor is prevalent.

Target population: 11% of children aged 5–17, or 2.1 million children, are engaged in child labor as of 2011. No eligibility criteria are stated in the article.

KASAMA is a large, one-time transfer of USD$184 to a family with child laborers present. Local governments maintain registries of poor families and families where child labor is illegal in the Philippines. The program was implemented by the Philippines Ministry of Labor (DOLE) in partnership with the authors. The transfer is made in kind rather than in cash (grains, fishing, livestock, sewing and tailoring, carpentry, other tools, and equipment). A 3-day training related to operating a business and child labor is also provided. Training assists in developing a business plan (which leads to the selection of the asset during the training day), some education on bookkeeping, marketing, and financial literacy, and an orientation on child labor. The child labor orientation is a description of how child labor is defined legally in the Philippines and how the government is engaging communities to reduce child labor.

• Whether productive asset impacts how the household generates livelihood.
• Whether the productive asset changes the well-being of the household or adolescents in beneficiary households.
• Whether productive asset changes the prevalence of child labor.

Randomized Control Trial

Study design: To determine the minimum detectable effects (MDEs) given the design for the primary outcome variables, the authors use the baseline data to calculate the means, standard deviations, and the intra-cluster correlation coefficients of each variable. The authors built two types of heterogeneity into the experiment design. All communities were divided into urban and rural areas, and they were also divided into whether all households in the study were receiving the government’s support program 4Ps (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program). Interacted, every community was then assigned to one of four strata, and randomization was conducted by the authors within each stratum. Thus, they could test for differences in the effect of KASAMA between urban and rural areas as well as between areas with complete 4Ps and those without.
Sample: 164 Communities (2,296 Households) were grouped into 4 strata by researchers, and then divided into two groups based on whether all households reported receiving 4Ps (cash transfer program that provides poor families with children with consumption support, health insurance, preventative health care, life skills coaching, job skills coaching, and financial access). A random number generator was used by the research team to allocate communities to treatment and control status. 82 communities were assigned to treatment
Survey Instrument: baseline/midline/endline surveys. In each round, interview the household member with the most knowledge of the household’s economic activity. To minimize potential performance bias in survey responses, no parties

involved in implementing KASAMA were engaged in the collection of data. A midline survey was collected between May 2017 and July 2017. The midline survey was designed to assist with tracking subjects and to confirm intervention rollout. The endline survey began in mid-February 2018 and finished in mid-June 2018.

Increases in employment among adolescents not engaged in child labor at baseline. Households are more likely to report a family firm and household-based economic activity increases with the intervention. Household food security and life satisfaction for adolescents in treatment households also improve.

Child Labour

Households

National

The intervention increased in employment among adolescents not previously engaged in child labour in the Philippines.

Households were more likely to report a family firm and household-based economic activity increased with the intervention. Household food security and life satisfaction for adolescents in treatment households also improved.

The study is not designed to measure within household distributional issues or longer-term changes to the household that may evolve in response to treatment.