Boys' Cognitive Skill Formation and Physical Growth: Long-Term Experimental Evidence on Critical Ages for Early Childhood Interventions

Barham, Tania; Macours, Karen; Maluccio, John A.

doi:10.1257/aer.103.3.467

Cited by 81 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…There are now several longer-term evaluations of cash transfers programs (mostly of CCTs) that indicate that while cash transfer programs might improve school attainment among adolescent beneficiaries, gains in terms of learning, employment, and income are limited or nonexistent as they become young women (Araujo, Bosch and Schady 2016;Baez and Camacho 2011;Barham, Macours and Maluccio 2013;Behrman, Parker and Todd 2011;Filmer and 5 Schady 2014). 5 There are also programs that target adolescent females directly by providing them a safe space to meet on a regular basis and develop life skills.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

When the Money Runs Out: Do Cash Transfers Have Sustained Effects on Human Capital Accumulation?

Baird¹,

McIntosh²,

Özler³

2016

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We examine the medium-term effects of a two-year cash transfer program targeted to adolescent girls and young women. Significant declines in HIV prevalence, teen pregnancy, and early marriage among recipients of unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) during the program evaporated quickly two years after the cessation of transfers. However, children born to UCT beneficiaries during the program had significantly higher height-for-age z-scores at follow-up.On the other hand, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) offered to out-of-school females at baseline produced a large increase in educational attainment and a sustained reduction in the total number of births, but caused no gains in health, labor market outcomes, or empowerment. Our findings point to both the promise and the limitations of cash transfer programs for sustained gains in welfare among young women.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

When the Money Runs Out: Do Cash Transfers Have Sustained Effects on Human Capital Accumulation?

Baird¹,

McIntosh²,

Özler³

2016

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“…We note that ours is one of only two evaluations that look at the effects of cash transfers after a decade. (Barham et al 2013;2016 (Dunn et al 1986). The TVIP has been used in a number of surveys in Ecuador (Araujo et al 2016;Schady 2007, 2010;Schady 2011) as well as in other countries in Latin America (Macours et al 2012;Schady et al 2015).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Barham et al (2013;2016) study the long-term effects of cash transfers made in Nicaragua. In one paper (Barham et al 2013) they compare outcomes for children whose families received cash transfers during the potentially critical "first 1,000 day" window (while the child was in utero and in the first two years of life) with children in families that received transfers somewhat later. They find that receiving cash transfers earlier in life raised performance on tests of cognition of boys by 0.15 standard deviations 10 years later.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Cash Transfers Help Households Escape an Inter-Generational Poverty Trap?

Araujo¹,

Bosch²,

Schady³

2017

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work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-IGO BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/ legalcode) and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose, as provided below. No derivative work is allowed.Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license.Following a peer review process, and with previous written consent by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a revised version of this work may also be reproduced in any academic journal, including those indexed by the American Economic Association's EconLit, provided that the IDB is credited and that the author(s) receive no income from the publication. Therefore, the restriction to receive income from such publication shall only extend to the publication's author(s). With regard to such restriction, in case of any inconsistency between the Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license and these statements, the latter shall prevail.Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent. AbstractMany poor households in developing countries are liquidity-constrained. As a result, they may under-invest in the human capital of their children. We provide new evidence on the long-term (10-year) effects of cash transfers using data from Ecuador. Our analysis is based on two separate sources of data and two identification strategies. First, we extend the results from an experiment that randomly assigned children under the age of 6 years to "early" or "late" treatment groups. Although the early treatment group received twice as much in total transfers, we find no difference between children in the two groups on performance on a large number of tests. Second, we use a regression discontinuity design exploiting the fact that a "poverty index" was used to determine eligibility for transfers. We focus on children who were just-eligible and just-ineligible for transfers when they were in late childhood, and compare their school attainment and work status 10 years later. Transfers increased secondary school completion, but the effects are small, between 1 and 2 percentage points from a counterfactual school completion rate of 75 percent. We conclude that any effect of cash transfers on the intergenerational transmission of poverty in Ecuador is likely to be modest.JEL code: I38

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“…In Zambia, the UCT had no impact on a highly abbreviated language and cognition scale (Seidenfeld and others 2014). Evidence from Peru showed no effects of the Juntos CCT on language outcomes in children (Andersen and others 2015), but two studies in Nicaragua showed benefits to cognitive development from participation in two different CT programs (Barham, Macours, and Maluccio 2013;Macours, Schady, and Vakis 2012).…”

Section: Early Child Development Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mexico (Fernald, Gertler, and Neufeld 2008) Nicaragua (Macours, Schady, andVakis 2008, 2012) Nicaragua (Barham, Macours, and Maluccio 2013) Uganda (Gilligan and Roy 2014) Ecuador, poorest quintile of rural population (Paxson and Schady 2010) Ecuador, children of rural mothers with no education (Fernald and Hidrobo 2011) Mexico (Fernald, Gertler, and Neufeld 2009) Peru (Andersen and others 2015) Zambia ( Mexico (Gertler 2000) Mexico (Gutiérrez andothers 2004, 2006) Nicaragua ( Malawi, CCT if HIV-negative (Kohler and Thornton 2012) Note: BMI = body mass index; CT = cash transfer; CCT = conditional cash transfer; HAZ = height-for-age z score; HIV/AIDS = human immunodefi ciency virus/acquired immune defi ciency syndrome; STI = sexually transmitted infection; UCT = unconditional cash transfer; WAZ = weight-for-age z score; WHZ = weight-for-height. …”

Section: Cognition and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%