Conditional Cash Transfers And Female Schooling : The Impact Of The Female School Stipend Program On Public School Enrollments In Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Instead of mean-tested Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs, some countries have implemented gender-targeted CCTs to explicitly address intra-household disparities in human capital investments. This study focuses on addressing the direct impact of a female school stipend program in Punjab, Pakistan -Did the intervention increase female enrollment in public schools? To address this question, we draw upon data from the provincial school censuses 2003 and 2005. We estimate the net growth in female enrollments in grade 6-8 in stipend eligible schools. Impact evaluation analysis, including difference-and-difference (DD), triple differencing (DDD) and regression-discontinuity design (RDD), indicate a modest but statistically significant impact of the intervention. The preferred estimator derived from a combination of DDD and RDD empirical strategies suggests that the average program impact between 2003 and 2005 was an increase of six female students per school in terms of absolute change and an increase of 9 percent in female enrollment in terms of relative change. A triangulation effort is also undertaken using two rounds of a nationally representative household survey before and after the intervention. Even though the surveys are not representative at the sub-provincial level, the results corroborate evidence of the impact using school census data.

Does Cash for School Influence Young Women's Behavior in the Longer Term? Evidence from Pakistan

“…These assessments have been corroborated by subsequent evaluations of similar interventions in Brazil, Honduras, Colombia, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Turkey, Pakistan, Malawi, and El Salvador. For the most part, their findings are consistent with the results of the Oportunidades program regarding positive impacts on the use of educational and health services and short-term consumption (Olinto et al, 2003;Glewwe and Olinto, 2004;Attanasio and Mesnard, 2005;Attanasio et al, 2005a and2005b;Filmer and Schady, 2006;Maluccio and Flores, 2005;Ahmed et al, 2007;Chaudhury and Parajuli, 2008;Baird et al, 2009). 4 In addition to positive effects on school attendance and enrollment, some evaluations also suggest that grade progression improves with CCTs.…”

“…al., 2009 (Filmer and Schady, 2006). A most directly related to this analysis, the short-term impact evaluation of the FSSP in Pakistan -the program analyzed in this paper -shows an increase in the enrollment of girls of about nine percentage points between 2003(Chaudhury and Parajuli, 2008. Although the impacts of these studies differ by magnitude, and the empirircal approaches vary, results appear to be consistent across programs and implementation contexts.…”

“…Additionally, an education voucher scheme was also implemented throughout Punjab, but targeting and modality are orthogonal to the program. percentage points (Chaudhury and Parajuli, 2008).…”

The impact of conditional cash transfers on the matriculation of junior high school students into rural China’s high schools

“…Other research conducted both in other developing countries (Schultz, 2004;De Janvry et al, 2006;Heinrich, 2007;Chaudhury and Parajuli, 2008;De Brauw and Hoddinott, 2011;Barrera-Osorio et al, 2011;) and even in rural China (Mo et al, 2013) has shown that CCTs can be effective in boosting school enrollment and/or decreasing school dropout. So why did the CCT not have greater impact on the students in our sample?…”

“…As of 2008, more than 20 lowand middle-income countries had such education-targeted CCT programs in place (Fiszbein et al, 2009). These CCT programs have been shown to raise education matriculation and attendance in many countries, such as in Colombia (Attanasio et al, 2010;Barrera-Osorio et al, 2011), Pakistan (Chaudhury and Parajuli, 2008), Mexico (Schultz, 2004;De Janvry et al, 2006;De Brauw and Hoddinott, 2011), and Brazil (Heinrich, 2007;Glewwe and Kassouf, 2012). A subset of these studies in Colombia and Mexico found impacts of CCT programs on matriculation and attendance at the high school level in particular (Heinrich, 2007;Attanasio et al, 2010;Barrera-Osorio et al, 2011).…”