Download or read book Essays on Ex Ante Evaluations of Cash Transfer Programs written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ex Ante Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs written by Francois Bourguignon and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part - such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities - are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design - such as benefit levels or the choice of the means - test - on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. Bourguignon, Ferreira, and Leite propose a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior based on microeconometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil's recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, the authors find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of poverty and inequality levels. This paper - a product of the Poverty Team, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the impact of policies on the distribution of incomes.
Download or read book How Do Ex Ante Simulations Compare with Ex Post Evaluations written by Phillippe G. Leite and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on Evaluation of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program written by Xiaohui Hou and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the chapters herein, I explore two issues related to the evaluation of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. The first examines the impact of droughts on food consumption and the mitigating effects of a CCT program. The second looks at the impact of a CCT program on adults' health.
Download or read book To Condition Or Not is that the Question written by Esther Schüring and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The World Bank Research Observer written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Does Soft Conditionality Increase the Impact of Cash Transfers on Desired Outcomes Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Lesotho written by Noemi Pace and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cash transfers programs have been shown to have positive effects on a variety of outcomes. While much of the literature focuses on the role of conditionality in achieving desired impact, this paper focuses on the role of 'soft conditionality' implemented through both 'labeling' and 'messaging' in evaluating the impact of the Child Grants Program in Lesotho, an unconditional cash transfer targeting poor households with orphans and vulnerable children. Beneficiary households received a clear message that the transfer should be spent on the interest and needs of children. Our findings are based on a randomized experiment and suggest that 'soft conditionality' does play a strong role in increasing expenditure for children, especially on education, clothing and footwear. Results indicate in fact that transfer income is spent differently from general income as it exerts both an income and a substitution effect. This behavioral change is confirmed by comparing the ex-ante expected behaviors with the ex-post actual response to the program. We find that for expenditure categories linked to the wellbeing of children the ex-post response was much higher than the ex-ante expected behavior.
Download or read book Essays on Labor Economics written by Arturo Harker R. and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 1: I develop and estimate a dynamic household choice model that incorporates a broad set of determinants of children's labor supply and school attendance, to perform ex-ante evaluations of alternative versions of the urban implementation of the Mexican conditional cash transfer program Oportunidades. Previous research suggests that re-calibrating the targeting and parameters of the educational component of the program could potentially improve its effectiveness with respect to two key objectives: (i) increasing average schooling levels and (ii) eliminating the educational gender gap. The estimation of this behavioral model complements previous ex-post evaluations by providing a forecasting tool that can replicate how the households solve the optimization problem as the program's structure changes. I focus on evaluating cost-equivalent policy schemes that improve the program's efficacy in the first dimension. I find that, by eliminating grants at primary and lower secondary levels (where attendance is close to universal) and proportionally expanding transfers at upper secondary, attendance rates could increase by 14.8% for youth 15-17. Chapter 2: From an economic policy perspective it is crucial to understand what rationale drives individuals to prefer to be employed in the informal sector rather than the formal one, but more importantly if informality is really a choice. As a first approach to disentangle this matter, I evaluate empirically the occupational choice model introduced by Roy (1951) to evaluate if self-selection is an important factor explaining the observed wage distribution in the informal sector. I argue that, under certain conditions, differences on the degree of enforcement of labor market regulation across municipalities can be exploited as a source of variation to identify more adequately the parameters. Given the huge heterogeneity within the informal sector, the model is estimated for two sub-samples: (i) salaried workers and (ii) self-employed workers. I find evidence of positive self-sorting into the informal sector: workers endowed with higher task proficiency for informal sector activities are self-selecting into this sector.
Download or read book Evaluating the Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs written by Laura B. Rawlings and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike most development initiatives, conditional cash transfer programs recently introduced in the Latin America and the Caribbean region have been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness. These programs provide money to poor families, conditional on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital-such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers on a regular basis. Rawlings and Rubio review the experience in evaluating the impact of these programs, exploring the application of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation methods and summarizing results from programs launched in Brazil, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Evaluation results from the first generation of programs in Brazil, Mexico, and Nicaragua show that conditional cash transfer programs are effective in promoting human capital accumulation among poor households. There is clear evidence of success in increasing enrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raising household consumption. Despite this promising evidence, many questions remain unanswered about the impact of conditional cash transfer programs, including those concerning their effectiveness under different country conditions and the sustainability of the welfare impacts.
Download or read book Conditional Cash Transfers written by Ariel Fiszbein and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. That is, the government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office, receiving vaccinations, or the like. They have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality and helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another. Do these and other claims make sense? Are they supported by the available empirical evidence? This volume seeks to answer these and other related questions. Specifically, it lays out a conceptual framework for thinking about the economic rationale for CCTs; it reviews the very rich evidence that has accumulated on CCTs; it discusses how the conceptual framework and the evidence on impacts should inform the design of CCT programs in practice; and it discusses how CCTs fit in the context of broader social policies. The authors show that there is considerable evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people and argue that conditional cash transfers have been an effective way of redistributing income to the poor. They also recognize that even the best-designed and managed CCT cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. They therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs, and social pensions.
Download or read book Evaluating the Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs written by Laura B. Rawlings and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cash transfer Programming in Emergencies written by Pantaleo Creti and published by Oxfam. This book was released on 2006 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In emergencies, distributing cash in a targeted manner can often meet people's immediate needs more quickly and appropriately than the direct distribution of commodities such as food aid. Cash gives people choices and thereby preserves their dignity. Commodity distribution may pose logistical problems, takes time, and in the case of food aid, may disrupt local markets if food is actually available within the affected country or region. But among humanitarian agencies there are fears that cash transfers will pose security risks, create inflation, and fail to be used to meet basic needs. In this guide, the first of its kind, Oxfam staff members present the rationale behind cash-transfer programs, considering the arguments for and against cash as an alternative to commodity distribution. They also give guidance on when cash is the most appropriate intervention and how to assess this. Different types of cash intervention are compared--cash grants, vouchers, and cash-for-work--and the guide uses checklists to explain the practical steps involved in implementing them. They draw on the experience of Oxfam and other agencies of operating such programs, including responses to the devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. The guidelines are primarily intended for NGO personnel: humanitarian program managers, food-security specialists, public-health engineers, finance staff, and logisticians. Policymakers in donor organizations and international agencies will also find them relevant. The sixteen cards contain key elements from the book to explain how to assess whether cash is the most appropriate response to any particular emergency. The cards and the paperback are also available as a set.
Download or read book Inequality and Economic Development in Brazil written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes Brazil so unequal? This title looks at this question and shows how inequalities weaken Brazil's economic development and what are the best policy options to reduce this inequity.
Download or read book Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance written by Margaret Grosh and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Targeting is a commonly used, but much debated, policy tool within global social assistance practice. Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance: A New Look at Old Dilemmas examines the well-known dilemmas in light of the growing body of experience, new implementation capacities, and the potential to bring new data and data science to bear. The book begins by considering why or whether or how narrowly or broadly to target different parts of social assistance and updates the global empirics around the outcomes and costs of targeting. It illustrates the choices that must be made in moving from an abstract vision to implementable definitions and procedures, and in deciding how the choices should be informed by values, empirics, and context. The importance of delivery systems and processes to distributional outcomes are emphasized, and many facets with room for improvement are discussed. The book also explores the choices between targeting methods and how differences in purposes and contexts shape those. The know-how with respect to the data and inference used by the different household-specific targeting methods is summarized and comprehensively updated, including a focus on “big data†? and machine learning. A primer on measurement issues is included. Key findings include the following: · Targeting selected categories, families, or individuals plays a valuable role within the framework of universal social protection. · Measuring the accuracy and cost of targeting can be done in many ways, and judicious choices require a range of metrics. · Weighing the relatively low costs of targeting against the potential gains is important. · Implementing inclusive delivery systems is critical for reducing errors of exclusion and inclusion. · Selecting and customizing the appropriate targeting method depends on purpose and context; there is no method preferred in all circumstances. · Leveraging advances in technology—ICT, big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning—can improve targeting accuracy, but they are not a panacea; better data matters more than sophistication in inference. · Targeting social protection should be a dynamic process.
Download or read book Essays in Program Evaluation and the Economics of Immigration written by Gabriel Maurice Gaudefroy Demombynes and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America written by Adato, Michelle and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2010-12-10 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs)cash grants to poor families that are conditional on their participation in education, health, and nutrition serviceshave become a vital part of poverty reduction strategies in many countries, particularly in Latin America. In Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America, the contributors analyze and synthesize evidence from case studies of CCTs in Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. The studies examine many aspects of CCTs, including the trends in development and political economy that fostered interest in them; their costs; their impacts on education, health, nutrition, and food consumption; and how CCT programs affect social relations shaped by gender, culture, and community. Throughout, the authors identify the strengths and weaknesses of CCTs and offer guidelines to those who design them.
Download or read book A Review of Recent Developments in Impact Evaluation written by Asian Development Bank and published by Asian Development Bank. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Impact evaluation aims to answer whether and to what extent a development intervention has delivered its intended effects, thus enabling evidence-based policy making. The desire for more hard evidence of the effectiveness of development interventions has fueled a growing interest in rigorous impact evaluation in the international development community. This report discusses the fundamental challenge of impact evaluation, which is to credibly attribute the impact, if any, to the intervention concerned. It then discusses the merits and limitations of various impact evaluation methods. It also presents a survey of recent applications of impact evaluation, focusing on the typical evaluation problems looked at, methods used, and key findings. The report includes six case studies and outlines practical steps in implementing an impact evaluation.
