Do CCTs Improve Employment and Earnings in the Very Long-Term? Evidence from Mexico

We assess long-term impacts of the Mexican conditional cash transfer (CCT) program on youth employment and earnings. We rely on the original random assignment into early and late treatment localities, which introduced CCTs in 1998 and 2000. We focus on children between 7 and 16 years of age in 1997, who we follow up to 17 years later. Using the household surveys between 2003 and 2015, we find that those with greater time of exposure to CCTs had greater increases in educational attainment. Moreover, we find significant and positive impacts of the program on the likelihood and quality of employment