The Targeting Benefit of Conditional Cash Transfers

Bergstrom, Katy ; Dodds, William

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER;    TARGETING;    SOCIAL ASSISTANCE;    EDUCATION;    HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-9101
RP-ID  :  WPS9101

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are apopular type of social welfare program that make payments tohouseholds conditional on human capital investments inchildren. Compared to unconditional cash transfers (UCTs),CCTs may exclude some low-income households as access istied to normal investments in children. This paper arguesthat conditionalities on children's school enrollmentoffer an unexplored targeting benefit over UCTs: CCTs targetmoney to households that forgo a discrete amount of childincome. This paper shows that the size of this targetingbenefit is directly related to the distribution of parentalincomes, the size of forgone child incomes, and twoelasticities already popular in the literature: the incomeeffect of a UCT and the price effect of a CCT. Theseelasticities are estimated for a large CCT program in ruralMexico, Progresa, using variation in transfers to youngersiblings to identify income effects. In this setting, theanalysis finds that the targeting benefit is almost as largeas the cost of excluding some low-income households; thisimplies that 41 percent of the Progresa budget should go toa CCT over a UCT based on targeting grounds alone.