An Evaluation of the Performance of Regression Discontinuity Design on PROGRESA
While providing the most reliable method of evaluating social programs, randomized experiments in developing and developed countries alike are accompanied by political risks and ethical issues that jeopardize the chances of adopting them. In this...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/09/5114458/evaluation-performance-regression-discontinuity-design-progresa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14153 |
| Summary: | While providing the most reliable method
of evaluating social programs, randomized experiments in
developing and developed countries alike are accompanied by
political risks and ethical issues that jeopardize the
chances of adopting them. In this paper the authors use a
unique data set from rural Mexico collected for the purposes
of evaluating the impact of the PROGRESA poverty alleviation
program to examine the performance of a quasi-experimental
estimator, the Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD). Using
as a benchmark the impact estimates based on the
experimental nature of the sample, we examine how estimates
differ when we use the RDD as the estimator for evaluating
program impact on two key indicators: child school
attendance and child work. Overall the performance of the
RDD was remarkably good. The RDD estimates of program
impact agreed with the experimental estimates in 10 out of
the 12 possible cases. The two cases in which the RDD
method failed to reveal any significant program impact on
the school attendance of boys and girls were in the first
year of the program (round 3). RDD estimates comparable to
the experimental estimates were obtained when we used as a
comparison group children from non-eligible households in
the control localities. |
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