What happens once the intervention ends? The medium-term impacts of a cash transfer experiment in Malawi

Abstract

The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) is an international grant-making NGO promoting evidence-informed development policies and programmes. We are the global leader in funding and producing high-quality evidence of what works, how, why and at what cost. We believe that better and policy-relevant evidence will make development more effective and improve people's lives. 3ie Impact Evaluations3ie-supported impact evaluations assess the difference a development intervention has made to social and economic outcomes. 3ie is committed to funding rigorous evaluations that include a theory-based design, use the most appropriate mix of methods to capture outcomes and are useful in complex development contexts. About this report3ie accepted the final version of this report, What happens once the intervention ends? The medium-term impacts of a cash transfer programme in Malawi, as partial fulfilment of requirements under grant OW2.147 issued under Open Window 2. The content has been copyedited and formatted for publication by 3ie. Due to unavoidable constraints at the time of publication, a few of the tables or figures may be less than optimal. All of the content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not represent the opinions of 3ie, its donors or its Board of Commissioners. Any errors and omissions are also the sole responsibility of the authors. All affiliations of the authors listed in the title page are those that were in effect at the time the report was accepted. Any comments or queries should be directed to the corresponding author, Sarah Baird at sbaird@email.gwu.edu Funding for this impact evaluation was provided by 3ie's donors, which include UKaid, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation and 12 other 3ie members that provide institutional support. A complete listing is provided on the 3ie website at http://www.3ieimpact.org/en/about/3ie-affiliates/3ie-members/ [2008][2009], and involved giving cash transfers, both conditional on schooling and unconditionally, to initially never-married 13-to-22-year-old young women. The Schooling, Income and Health Risk (SIHR) study was designed to evaluate the impacts of the cash transfer program on a variety of outcomes ranging from education to health to sexual behavior. The SIHR study is a randomized control trial where young women were randomly assigned to one of three groups: control, unconditional cash transfer (UCT), and conditional cash transfer (CCT) The strong and significant short-term impacts of the ZCTP (using data collected in 2008 and 2010) have been documented elsewhere. This report focuses on impacts two years after the program ended, in 2012-2013, to try and understand whether this relatively short (two-year) intervention of cash transfers -introduced at a particularly important period of transition from adolescence to adulthood -can have lasting effects on this cohort of young females and their future families. The analysis focuses on four key domains for the recipients of the cash transfer program: education; ...

Keeping Girls in School

“…CCTs were found to be more cost-effective than UCTs in increasing enrollment and test scores, but UCTs were more effective in delaying marriage and pregnancy (Baird, McIntosh, and Özler 2011). Two years after the end of the program, there were no lasting effects, although cash transfers did have lasting impacts on girls who had dropped out of school before the start of the program but were offered CCTs to return to school (Baird et al 2015). These girls had completed 0.6 more year of schooling and were 8 percentage points more likely to have completed primary school than the control group.…”

Identifying Causal Effects of Reproductive Health Improvements on Women's Economic Empowerment Through the Population Poverty Research Initiative

“…When women use the delayed time for something other than education, or social momentum does not take place, women can lose out from the delayed first birth and become matched with less desirable partners. In the PopPov Network, we saw that these conditions became important results in an African context …”

“…But then Baird and colleagues conducted a second follow‐up study in Malawi, which offers a caution that, in some contexts, the delay in marriage and first birth may hinder marriage market options and lower women's economic empowerment in the long run as they enter a household with lower education attainment of the head of household and lower household asset wealth. This result echoes the theoretical framework Goldin and Katz mapped out in their work on the power of the pill in the United States …”

“…Baird and colleagues' research on cash transfers highlighted that delaying first birth needs to be for the purpose of accumulating capital (human, physical, or social) for there to be a positive impact of delayed marriage and first birth on women's long‐term economic empowerment . Interventions such as the cash transfers or vouchers that are designed to encourage behavior change (eg, delayed first birth) are used because researchers (or cash transfer providers) assume that the delay in the first birth will free up time for the woman to substantially increase her human or physical capital and break free of the poverty trap.…”

Uses and misuses of evaluation in social policy

“…In a recent trial in Malawi, for example, the behavioural condition targeted children at risk of not going to school without the benefit of a CCT. The behavioural condition placed upon transfer recipients was thus regular attendance of children in school (Baird et al, 2009a(Baird et al, , 2009b(Baird et al, , 2015. Some villages were randomly assigned to the social assistance programme and others were not (Figure 9.1).…”