The Medium Term Impacts of Cash and In-kind Food Transfers on Learning
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Authors
Avitabile, Ciro
Cunha, Jesse M.
Cohn, Ricardo Meilman
Subjects
welfare transfers
medium-term effects
learning outcomes
medium-term effects
learning outcomes
Advisors
Date of Issue
2019
Date
2019
Publisher
World Bank
Language
en_US
Abstract
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.
Type
Article
Description
Series/Report No
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
56 p.
Citation
Avitabile, Ciro, Jesse M. Cunha, and Ricardo Meilman Cohn. "The Medium Term Impacts of Cash and In-kind Food Transfers on Learning." (2019).
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.