The Medium Term Impacts of Cash and In-kind Food Transfers on Learning
This paper studies the medium-term impact of early-life welfare transfers on children's learning. It studies children who were exposed to the randomized controlled trial of the Mexico's Food Support Program (the Programa de Apoyo Alimenta...
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/346501576597006155/The-Medium-Term-Impacts-of-Cash-and-In-kind-Food-Transfers-on-Learning http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33055 |
| Summary: | This paper studies the medium-term
impact of early-life welfare transfers on children's
learning. It studies children who were exposed to the
randomized controlled trial of the Mexico's Food
Support Program (the Programa de Apoyo Alimentario, PAL), in
which households were assigned to receive cash, in-kind food
transfers, or nothing (a control). The children are matched
with administrative data on primary school standardized
tests, which were taken four to 10 years after the
experiment began. The findings show that in-kind transfers
did not impact test scores, while cash transfers led to a
significant and meaningful decrease in test scores. An
analysis of the mechanisms driving these results reveals
that both transfers led to an increase in child labor, which
is likely detrimental to learning. In-kind food transfers,
however, induced a greater consumption of several key
micronutrients that are vital for brain development, which
likely attenuated the negative impacts of child labor on learning. |
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