A growing number of developing economies are providing cash transfers to poor people that require certain behaviors on their part, such as attending school or regularly visiting health care facilities. A simple ex ante methodology is proposed for evaluating such programs and used to assess the...

Several developing economies have recently introduced conditional cash transfer programs, which provide money to poor families contingent on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital, such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers. The approach is both an...

During the past decade, the use of conditional cash transfer programs to increase investment in human capital has generated considerable excitement in both research and policy forums. This article surveys the existing literature, which suggests that most conditional cash transfer programs are...

We consider the impact of tax credits and income support programs on female education choice, employment, hours and human capital accumulation over the life-cycle. We analyze both the short run incentive effects and the longer run implications of such programs. By allowing for risk aversion and...

The Honduran PRAF experiment randomly assigned conditional cash transfers to 40 of 70 poor municipalities, within five strata defined by a poverty proxy. Using census data, we show that eligible children were 8 percentage points more likely to enroll in school and 3 percentage points less likely...

Policies to expand basic schooling in Bangladesh have generally fit well with popular desires and preferences for upward mobility through education. But as Bangladeshi society becomes increasingly educated, the sizeable minority persistently excluded from school are experiencing new processes of...

We examine the extent to which children are exposed to the welfare system through their mother's receipt of benefits and its impact on several developmental outcomes. Using data from the matched mother-child file from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we find that children's...