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The Impact Evaluation Series has been established in recognition of the importance of impact evaluation studies for World Bank operations and for development in general. The series serves as a vehicle for the dissemination of findings of those studies. Papers in this series are part of the Bank's Policy Research Working Paper Series. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

This study estimates long-run impacts of a child health investment, exploiting community-wide experimental variation in school-based deworming. The program increased labor supply among men and education among women, with accompanying shifts in labor market specialization. Ten years after deworming treatment, men who were eligible as boys stay enrolled for more years of primary school, work 17% more hours each week, spend more time in nonagricultural self-employment, are more likely to hold manufacturing jobs, and miss one fewer meal per week. Women who were in treatment schools as girls are approximately one quarter more likely to have attended secondary school, halving the gender gap. They reallocate time from traditional agriculture into cash crops and nonagricultural self-employment. We estimate a conservative annualized financial internal rate of return to deworming of 32%, and show that mass deworming may generate more in future government revenue than it costs in subsidies.

This Campbell systematic review assesses the effects of conditional and unconditional cash transfer programmes on education outcomes in low‐ and middle‐income countries. The review summarizes findings from 35 studies. Both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programmes increase enrolment compared to no program. But they have at best a small effect on learning outcomes, although the evidence base on learning is small. Cash transfers have a larger effect on enrolment if there are conditions that are strictly monitored and enforced. Programs that are explicitly conditional, monitor compliance and penalize non‐compliance have substantively larger effects – increasing the odds of enrolment by 60% compared to less than 20% for programs with no conditions. Executive summary BACKGROUNDIncreasing educational attainment around the world is one of the key aims of the Millennium Development Goals. Cash transfer programs, both conditional and unconditional, are a popular social protection tool in developing countries that aim, among other things, to improve education outcomes in developing countries. The debate over whether these programs should include conditions has been at the forefront of recent global policy discussions. This systematic review aims to complement the existing evidence on the effectiveness of these programs in improving schooling outcomes and help inform the debate surrounding the design of cash transfer programs. OBJECTIVESOur main objective was to assess the relative effectiveness of conditional and unconditional cash transfers in improving enrollment, attendance and test scores in developing countries. Our secondary objective was to understand the role of different dimensions of the cash transfer programs, particularly the role of the intensity of conditions and the effects of priming (with respect to the importance of children's schooling) in cash transfer programs. SEARCH STRATEGYFive main strategies were used to identify relevant reports: (1) Electronic searches of 37 international databases (concluded on 18 April 2012), (2) contacted researchers working in the area, (3) hand searched key journals, (4) reviewed websites of relevant organizations, and (5) given the year delay between the original search and the final edits of the review we updated our references with all new eligible references the study team was aware of as of 30 April 2013. SELECTION CRITERIATo be eligible for this review, studies had to either assess the impact of a conditional cash transfer program (CCT), with at least one condition explicitly related to schooling, or evaluate an unconditional cash transfer program (UCT). The report had to include at least one quantifiable measure of enrollment, attendance or test scores. The report had to be published after 1997, utilize a randomized control trial or a quasi‐experimental design, and take place in a developing country. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSISA data extraction sheet was constructed to collect data on impacts and characteristics of the report and intervention. Enrollmen...

Health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries, yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial. We investigate whether short-term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1.7 million births in 59 developing countries. We show a large, negative association between per capita GDP and infant mortality. Female infant mortality is more sensitive than male infant mortality to negative economic shocks, suggesting that policies that protect the health status of female infants may be especially important during economic downturns. © 2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cash transfer programmes are a popular social protection tool in developing countries that aim, among other things, to improve education outcomes in developing countries. The debate over whether these programmes should include conditions has been at the forefront of recent policy discussions. This systematic review aims to complement the existing evidence on the effectiveness of these programmes in improving schooling outcomes and help inform the debate surrounding the design of cash transfer programmes. Using data from 75 reports that cover 35 different studies, the authors find that both conditional cash transfers (CCTs) and unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) improve the odds of being enrolled in and attending school compared to no cash transfer programme. The effect sizes for enrolment and attendance are always larger for CCTs compared to UCTs, but the difference is not statistically significant. When programmes are categorised as having no schooling conditions, having some conditions with minimal monitoring and enforcement and having explicit conditions that are monitored and enforced, a much clearer pattern emerges whereby programmes that are explicitly conditional, monitor compliance and penalise non-compliance have substantively larger effects (60% improvement in odds of enrolment). Unlike enrolment and attendance, the effectiveness of cash transfer programmes on improving test scores is small at best. More research is needed that examines longer-term outcomes such as test scores and, more generally, evaluating the impacts of UCTs.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which current voluntary corporate environmental reports meet the requirements of two new sets of guidelines: (i) the Global Reporting Initiative GRI 2000 sustainability reporting guidelines and (ii) the ISO 14031 environmental performance evaluation standard. We converted them to comprehensiveness scoring systems then used them along with three existing comprehensiveness scoring systems to evaluate the 1999 reports of 40 of the largest global industrial companies. Many of the reports scored highly with the existing systems, but the GRI and ISO guidelines are much more detailed and comprehensive, and resulted in much lower scores. In particular, the economic and social topics that make up 42% of the potential GRI score and the environmental condition indicators that make up 22% of the ISO 14031 score were minimally addressed in all of the companies' environmental reports. Current reporting practices of the companies whose reports we examined here are well below the standards reflected in the GRI and ISO 14031 guidelines, even when the reports scored well with existing report scoring systems. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment

Recent evidence suggests that Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (CCTs) for schooling are effective in raising school enrolment and attendance. However, there is reason to believe that such programs can also affect other outcomes, such as the sexual behavior of their young beneficiaries. Zomba Cash Transfer Program (ZCTP) is a randomized ongoing CCT intervention targeting young women in Malawi that provides incentives (in the form of school fees and cash transfers) to current schoolgirls and recent dropouts to stay in or return to school. An average offer of US$10/month conditional on satisfactory school attendance -plus direct payment of secondary school fees -led to significant declines in early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and self-reported sexual activity among program beneficiaries after just one year of program implementation. For program beneficiaries who were out of school at baseline, the probability of getting married or becoming pregnant declined by more than 40% and 30%, respectively. In addition, the incidence of the onset of sexual activity was 33% lower among program beneficiaries than that in the control group. Overall, these results suggest that CCT programs not only serve as useful tools for improving school attendance, but may also reduce sexual activity, as well as teen pregnancy and early marriage.