Wealth differentials in the impact of conditional and unconditional cash transfers on education: findings from a community-randomised controlled trial in Zimbabwe

Africa

Zimbabwe

Social Protection

Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT)

R Fenton et al.

2016

Fenton, Rory, et al. “Wealth Differentials in the Impact of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers on Education: Findings from a Community-Randomised Controlled Trial in Zimbabwe.” Psychology, health & medicine 21.8 (2016): 909–917.
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The data in this study are taken from the baseline and follow-up surveys conducted in 2009 and 2010 in a C-RCT comparing CCT and UCT in Manicaland, an area in the east of Zimbabwe. Public datasets not identified.

2016

N. A.

2009-2011 (transfers: January 2010-January 2011)

Improve the welfare of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) in Manicaland (Zimbabwe).

Households were eligible to participate in the cash transfer program if they (i) contained children, (ii) were not in the highest wealth quintile, and (iii) satisfied at least one of the following conditions: the head of the household was a child; the household cared for at least one orphan (a child with at least one deceased parent), a disabled person, or an individual who was chronically ill; or the household was in the poorest wealth quintile.

Wealth quintiles were created by surveying household assets and using a simple summed score. Local communities were asked to split households in their areas into quintiles ranked from poorest to least poor. To be considered as being in the poorest quintile for the CT intervention, a household had to have been deemed to be so by both the wealth index and community ranking. The conditions applied to the CCT recipients: children had to have 80% school attendance for the previous 2 months, have a full vaccination record, have at least applied for a birth certificate, and parents had to attend parenting classes. When collecting cash, CCT participants were required to show relevant documents to prove they had met these conditions. After 6 months of not meeting the conditions, CCT households lost 10% of the transfer and eventually lost control of how the transfer was spent.

• Education: repeat year in school, money spent on education
• Child labor

RCT

Study design: The data in this study are taken from the baseline and follow-up surveys conducted in 2009 and 2010 in a C-RCT comparing CCT (conditional cash transfers) and UCT (unconditional cash transfers) in Manicaland, an area in the east of Zimbabwe. In 2009, all households were enumerated in ten geographically distinct sites (of the 12 in the Manicaland cohort study; on average, around 1200 households per site). After baseline enumeration, each site was divided into three similarly sized matched clusters, and each of these 3 clusters was randomly assigned to one of the CCT, UCT, and control arms.
Sample: a total of 1,199 households were assigned to the control group, 1525 to the UCT arm, and 1319 to the CCT arm. Assignment of clusters to trial arms was determined by the public drawing of lots.
Survey Instrument: baseline and follow-up survey. The follow-up survey was a repeat of the baseline survey with additional questions about whether the child had repeated the previous year of school and how much of the transfer had been spent on education.

Conditionality does not penalize the poorest recipients, with CCTs and UCTs having similar impacts amongst the poorest quintiles. However, UCTs did not impact the least poor recipients’ school attendance, while CCTs still did. Children benefitting from conditional cash transfers spent an average of .31 fewer hours in paid work than those who do not receive it, and children in unconditional cash transfers spent an average of .15 fewer hours in paid work each week than those who do not receive any transfers.

Child Labour

Households

Local

Conditionality does not penalize the poorest recipients, with CCTs and UCTs having similar impacts amongst the poorest quintiles. Children benefiting from conditional cash transfers spent an average of .31 fewer hours in paid work than those who do not receive it, and children in unconditional cash transfers spent an average of .15 fewer hours in paid work each week than those who do not receive any transfers.

UCTs did not impact the least poor recipients’ school attendance, while CCTs still did.

One limitation of the study is that the data exist only for how much of the cash transfer was spent on school expenses for the treatment groups, but there is no data on total household expenditure and expenditure data from the control group. Also, the baseline data for child labor repeating a year of school do not exist for this study, removing the ability to look at changes over time.