Recent evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer programs for schooling are effective in raising school enrollment and attendance. However, there is also reason to believe that such programs can affect other outcomes, such as the sexual behavior of their young beneficiaries. Zomba Cash...

As of 2007, 29 developing countries had some type of conditional cash transfer program in place, with many others planning or piloting one. However, the evidence base needed by a government to decide how to design a new conditional cash transfer program is severely limited in a number of...

In this paper, the authors investigate the effect of positive income shocks on the mental health of adolescent girls using experimental evidence from a cash transfer program in Malawi. They find that the provision of monthly cash transfers had a strong beneficial impact on the mental health of...

An extensive multi-disciplinary literature examines the effects of learning one's HIV status on subsequent risky sexual behaviors. However, many of these studies rely on non-experimental designs; use self-reported outcome measures, or both. This study investigates the effects of a randomly...

This study examines the medium-term effects of a two-year cash transfer program targeted to adolescent girls and young women. Significant declines in HIV prevalence, teen pregnancy, and early marriage among recipients of unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) during the program evaporated quickly...

We examine the impact of early marriage across a wide range of outcomes for women in rural western Kenya. The timing of physical maturation in girls has been shown to influence marriage timing in a quasi-random manner, and we find that each additional year that menarche is delayed is associated...

This paper analyzes bilateral foreign aid flows over the period 1973-2010 to investigate whether the gender composition of legislatures in donor nations affects the aid response to recipient country crises. Our findings suggest that donors with higher shares of women in office provide larger...

This paper investigates whether the gender composition of national legislatures in donor countries impacts the level, composition, and pattern of foreign aid. We provide evidence that the election of female legislators leads countries to increase aid both in total and as a percentage of GDP....