Centre for Research in Health and Economics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain & University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Universitat de Barcelona & Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB) & Centre for Research in Health and Economics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain.
Econ Hum Biol. 2020 Jan;36:100817. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2019.100817. Epub 2019 Sep 9.
Cash transfer (CT) policy is promoted as an important financial vehicle to address household poverty and bring positive societal development. This study investigates the impact of an unconditional CT policy on children's education outcomes focusing on both the primary and secondary phases of education. We also examine the spillover effect of CT policy on parents' employment. To identify these effects we focus on South Africa and exploit the changes in age eligibility requirements of the CT policy to build credible control and treatment groups based on birth cohort. Our results show that CT policy improves reading and writing abilities at both the primary (by 3.7% and 3.3% respectively) and secondary education levels (by 10.2% and 10.1%, respectively) but it fosters school attendance only in secondary education. We also provide evidence that, for primary education students, the effects are only significant for boys. Notably, the positive effects of CT programs are also confirmed by the presence of spillover effects to other members of the family in our observance of increases in both mothers' and fathers' employment outcomes (by 35% and 34%, respectively). Therefore, in this paper we provide robust evidence that unconditional CT policy supports resilient development of the country's population in several dimensions that go beyond the educational achievement of targeted children.
现金转移（CT）政策被宣传为解决家庭贫困和带来积极社会发展的重要金融手段。本研究调查了无条件 CT 政策对儿童教育成果的影响，重点关注教育的小学和中学阶段。我们还考察了 CT 政策对父母就业的溢出效应。为了识别这些影响，我们关注南非，并利用 CT 政策的年龄资格要求变化，根据出生队列建立可信的控制和治疗组。我们的结果表明，CT 政策提高了小学（分别提高阅读和写作能力 3.7%和 3.3%）和中学教育水平（分别提高 10.2%和 10.1%），但仅促进中学教育的出勤率。我们还提供了证据表明，对于小学教育的学生，这些影响仅对男孩有意义。值得注意的是，我们观察到母亲和父亲的就业结果都有所增加（分别增加 35%和 34%），这表明 CT 计划的积极影响也存在家庭其他成员的溢出效应。因此，在本文中，我们提供了有力的证据表明，无条件 CT 政策支持该国人口在多个方面的有弹性发展，这些方面超出了目标儿童的教育成就。
