This paper evaluates current payment schemes employed by the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in the Philippines using six assessment criteria: transaction cost, security/risks, speed and timeliness, acceptability, resilience and flexibility. Employing data collected at the regional level, we establish four main findings: (1) all 4Ps payment conduits present trade-offs; (2) a payment approach that uses mainstream financial infrastructure is beneficial if cost, speed and simplicity of the payment system are critical; (3) competition for 4Ps contracts for Payment Service Providers (PSPs) has improved the quality of payment services and minimized costs; and (4) the efficiency of the program is greatly influenced by the commitment of the PSP to deliver the cash benefits to the recipients in a timely manner rather than by maximizing conduit branches.

The present study adds to the empirical literature examining the effects of conditional cash transfers on school outcomes. Using school-level and student-level enrolment data from Davao Oriental Philippines, we evaluate the influence of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (also known as 4Ps), a social development policy program, on the growth rates in school enrolment outcomes. The findings show that 4Ps, on average, increased school enrolment of children by 1.12 percent. It was also apparent that using student-level data as opposed to school-level data revealed a more robust effect of 4Ps on school outcomes. We also found some school and socioeconomic characteristics influencing the change in school enrolments. Finally, this study highlights the role of government intervention programs in improving access to education in the poorest sector of the economy.

The present paper examines the administrative efficiency of implementing the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in the Philippines. Using data collected at a municipal level for four provinces in the Davao Region, administrative efficiency scores were computed, employing cost transfer ratios (CTR) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) for the individual municipal operations offices (MOOs) implementing the programme. CTR estimates showed that the greatest proportion of total expenditure in cash transfer programmes was direct cash transfers, which implied an efficient use of programme funding. The DEA results showed an average technical efficiency score of 0.905, which implied that there was significant potential to further improve the performance of delivery of 4Ps. The results revealed that relatively high technical efficiency scores of MOOs did not necessarily translate into a more cost-efficient implementation of the programme. Nevertheless, a positive correlation was found between CTR and the high technical efficiency scores of the MOOs implementing the programme.