Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A Labeled Cash Transfer for Education

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Benhassine, Najy; Devoto, Florencia; Duflo, Esther; Dupas, Pascaline; Pouliquen, Victor
• 署名单位: The World Bank; Paris School of Economics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20130225
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 86-125
• 关键词: Poverty alleviation; transfer programs; LABOR

摘要

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have been shown to increase human capital investments, but their standard features make them expensive. We use a large randomized experiment in Morocco to estimate an alternative government-run program, a labeled cash transfer (LCT): a small cash transfer made to fathers of school-aged children in poor rural communities, not conditional on school attendance but explicitly labeled as an education support program. We document large gains in school participation. Adding conditionality and targeting mothers made almost no difference in our context. The program increased parents' belief that education was a worthwhile investment, a likely pathway for the results.