Does Money Matter? The Effects of Cash Transfers on Child Health and Development in Rural Ecuador
The authors examine how a government-run cash transfer program targeted to poor mothers in rural Ecuador influenced the health and development of their children. This program is of particular interest because, unlike other transfer programs that ha...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/05/7581259/money-matter-effects-cash-transfers-child-health-development-rural-ecuador http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7076 |
| Summary: | The authors examine how a government-run
cash transfer program targeted to poor mothers in rural
Ecuador influenced the health and development of their
children. This program is of particular interest because,
unlike other transfer programs that have been implemented
recently in Latin America, receipt of the cash transfers was
not conditioned on specific parental actions, such as taking
children to health clinics or sending them to school. This
feature of the program makes it possible to assess whether
conditionality is necessary for programs to have beneficial
effects on children. The authors use random assignment at
the parish level to identify the program's effects.
They find that the cash transfer program had positive
effects on the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional
development of children, and the treatment effects were
substantially larger for the poorer children than for less
poor children. Among the poorest children in the sample,
those whose mothers were eligible for transfers had outcomes
that were on average more than 20 percent of a standard
deviation higher than those for comparable children in the
control group. Treatment effects are somewhat larger for
girls and for children with more highly-educated mothers.
The authors examine three mechanisms-better nutrition,
greater use of health care, and better parenting-through
which the transfers might influence child development. The
program appeared to improve children's nutrition and
increased the chance they were treated for helminth
infections. But children in the treatment group were not
more likely to visit health clinics for growth monitoring,
and the mental health and parenting of their mothers did not improve. |
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