scholarly journals Compulsory education laws or incentives from CCT programs? Explaining the rise in secondary school attendance rate in Argentina

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Edo ◽  
Mariana Marchionni ◽  
Santiago Garganta

Argentina has traditionally stood out in terms of educational outcomes among its Latin American counterparts. Schooling of older children, however, still shows room for improvement especially among the more vulnerable. Fortunately, during the last years a sizeable improvement in attendance rates for children aged 15 through 17 took place. This could be related to the 2006 National Education Law that made upper-secondary education compulsory. In this paper, instead, we claim that the Asignación Universal por Hijo (Universal Child Allowance, AUH) -a massive conditional cash transfer program implemented in 2009 in Argentina- may be mostly responsible for this improvement. Using a difference-in-difference strategy we estimate that the program accounts for a 3.9 percentage point increase in the probability of attending secondary school among eligible children aged 15 through 17. The impact seems to be led by boys and is more relevant for children living in larger families where the head of household has a lower educational level.

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paloma Santana Moreira Pais ◽  
Felipe de Figueiredo Silva ◽  
Evandro Camargos Teixeira

Purpose The Brazilian Government created the Bolsa Familia program to combat poverty and the insertion of so many children into the labor market. This program is an income transfer program subject to certain conditions such as a minimum school attendance for children under 17 years of age. In 2006, almost half of the people with an income per capita of R$300.00 (US$139.53) per month declared that they received this benefit. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of Bolsa Familia on child labor in Brazil in 2006. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a propensity score matching model with data from the National Household Sample Survey PESQUISA NACIONAL POR AMOSTRA DE DOMICÍLIOS (PNAD), for 2006. Findings Results indicate that the program increased the number of hours of child labor in Brazil. However, this outcome might be explained by the fact that those families who received Bolsa Familia were also those with higher socioeconomic vulnerability. Thus, they need to guarantee their survival with the income generated via child labor. Social implications The Brazilian Government needs to invest not only in monetary transfer policies but also in the improvement of the job market to create opportunities for the social development of children. Originality/value The contribution of the paper is the investigation into the effect of the Bolsa Familia program on the average time allocated to child labor; the authors find that this time allocation could be reduced by requiring a compulsory school attendance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karthik Muralidharan ◽  
Nishith Prakash

We study the impact of an innovative program in the Indian state of Bihar that aimed to reduce the gender gap in secondary school enrollment by providing girls who continued to secondary school with a bicycle that would improve access to school. Using data from a large representative household survey, we employ a triple difference approach (using boys and the neighboring state of Jharkhand as comparison groups) and find that being in a cohort that was exposed to the Cycle program increased girls' age-appropriate enrollment in secondary school by 32 percent and reduced the corresponding gender gap by 40 percent. We also find an 18 percent increase in the number of girls who appear for the high-stakes secondary school certificate exam, and a 12 percent increase in the number of girls who pass it. Parametric and non-parametric decompositions of the triple-difference estimate as a function of distance to the nearest secondary school show that the increases in enrollment mostly took place in villages that were further away from a secondary school, suggesting that the mechanism of impact was the reduction in the time and safety cost of school attendance made possible by the bicycle. We also find that the Cycle program was much more cost effective at increasing girls' secondary school enrollment than comparable conditional cash transfer programs in South Asia. (JEL H42, I21, I28, J16, O15, O18)


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diether Beuermann ◽  
Andrea Ramos Bonilla ◽  
Marco Stampini

We explore whether the academic benefit from attending a preferred secondary school differs between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the Jamaican Conditional Cash Transfer Program, Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH). The academic outcomes assessed include end of secondary and post-secondary high-stakes examinations independently administered by the Caribbean Examinations Council. Among girls, receiving PATH benefits before secondary school enrollment does not influence the academic gains from attending a more selective school. However, boys who received PATH benefits prior to secondary school enrollment benefit significantly less from subsequently attending a more selective school with respect to comparable peers who did not receive PATH benefits. These results suggest negative dynamic interactions between PATH and selective secondary schools among boys.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mônica Viegas Andrade ◽  
Flávia Chein ◽  
Rafael Perez Ribas ◽  
Jaume Puig-Junoy

This paper investigates the impact of the Bolsa Familia program, a conditional cash transfer program focused on Brazilian poor families, on children‘s nutritional status in a context of low monitoring of conditionalities. The analysis is carried out using data from a baseline survey conducted in 2005, the “Bolsa Família” Impact Evaluation Research. The evaluation is made using the Propensity Score Matchingtechnique. Besides considering observational differences between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of Bolsa Família Program, our empirical strategy also addresses some concerns about informational issues in order to take into account potential endogeneity of the decision to participate in the Program. Our final results show a positive effect of Bolsa Família Program on children nutritional status only whencontrolling for the informational bias and for those children fulfilling educational requirements; however, this positive impact on nutritional status is restricted to BMIfor-age but does not affect height-for-age.


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