James Manley

Effects of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program on Children's Behavior Problems

OBJECTIVES. Governments are increasingly using conditional cash transfer programs to reduce the negative effects of poverty on childrens development. These programs have demonstrated benefits for childrens nutrition and physical development, but the effect of conditional cash transfers on childrens behaviors has not been systematically evaluated. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of a conditional cash transfer on childrens behavior by using a quasi-experimental design. METHODS. In 1997, the Mexican government initiated a large-scale conditional cash transfer (Oportunidades) in 506 very poor rural communities. Oportunidades provided cash transfers that were contingent on visits to medical practitioners, consumption of nutritional supplementation, and school enrollment. In 2003, an assessment of 4- to 6-year-old children in these households was conducted, and outcomes were compared with children from 152 additional poor rural communities who had been recruited by using rigorous matching procedures. The primary outcome measure for this analysis was maternal report of behavior problems in terms of anxiety/depressive and aggressive/oppositional symptoms. Analyses reported here compared 778 children from beneficiary households who had received 3.5 to 5.0 years of exposure to the program and a comparison group of 263 children who had received no exposure to the program at the time of assessment but whose families later enrolled in the program. RESULTS. Participation in Oportunidades was associated with a 10% decrement in aggressive/oppositional symptoms but was not associated with significant decrements in anxiety/depressive symptoms or total problem behaviors while controlling for covariates. Effects of treatment did not differ by childrens gender or ethnicity. CONCLUSIONS. Although this large-scale conditional cash transfer program for poor Mexican families did not directly address childrens behavior problems, it found evidence of indirect effects on childrens behavior. Results suggest that interventions that focus on investing in basic human capital needs may exert longer term ripple effects on childrens development.

The Coffee Crisis, Early Childhood Development, and Conditional Cash Transfers

This paper examines the efficacy of three conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs in Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua in mitigating the potential negative effects of an income shock caused by falling prices of coffee, an important cash crop to many CCT participants. A theoretical household model is developed that demonstrates both the positive potential of CCTs to mitigate negative shocks effects on early childhood development and the negative potential of CCTs to exacerbate the impacts of a negative shock to early childhood development if the conditionality encourages households to shift resources from younger to older children to sustain their school attendance. The experimental design includes both CCT and non-CCT households and communities with and without coffee production. The paper finds that in Mexico the CCT mitigated the negative shock on child height-for-age z-scores, while in Nicaragua coffeeproducing households who participated in CCTs saw greater declines in z-scores. Findings for Honduras are largely inconclusive.

Long-Run Health Consequences of Air Pollution: Evidence from Indonesia's Forest Fires of 1997

While many studies in the medical literature documented causal relationships between air pollution and negative health outcomes immediately following exposure, much less is known about the long run health consequences of pollution exposure. Using the 1997 Indonesian forest fires as a natural experiment, we estimate the long term effects of air pollution on health outcomes. We take advantage of the longitudinal nature of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), which collects detailed individual data on a multitude of health outcomes, in both 1997 and 2007. We find significant negative effects of pollution, which persist in the long run. Men and the elderly are impacted the most, while children seem to recover almost completely from these early shocks.

Wealthy, healthy and wise: does money compensate for being born into difficult conditions?

Recent studies have linked transfers from Mexican conditional cash transfer programme Oportunidades (formerly PROGRESA) to improvements in child development (Fernald et al., 2008, 2009), but this work has been criticized as failing to account for endogeneity of the transfers. We create an exogenous instrument for the amount of transfers and use it to test programme and transfer effects. Applying the new instrument confirms that improvements in child development are more linked to the transfers themselves than to other portions of the programme, which involve medical check-ups as well as educational sessions for mothers.

Early-Childhood Nutrition and Educational Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes have been linked to improvements in education, but effects on nutritional status are unclear. We develop a theoretical household model demonstrating how CCTs’ educational requirements may constrain households to shift resources from younger to older children to sustain school attendance. This could limit households’ capacity to invest in young childrens nutritional status, particularly given a negative income shock. In a Nicaraguan pilot CCT, recipients’ consumption and nutritional status increased on average, but less in households with school-age children. Effects are stronger in communities dealt an exogenous income shock.

Are Cash Transfers the answer for child nutrition in Sub‐Saharan Africa? A Literature Review

Early evidence has been ambiguous on the effects of cash transfer programmes on children, but little has focused on Africa. We review the literature on twenty cash transfer schemes, including twelve from Sub-Saharan Africa. Such interventions have shown improvements in household diet and in some cases to agriculture, but have not always improved child health. However, a larger perspective focusing on the first 1000 days of life reveals more opportunities for impact. In particular the opportunity to empower young women to get secondary education and cut adolescent pregnancy rates can improve the health of African children. Cash transfer programmes seem cost effective, though they are not without flaws.

Stunted by the Smoke? Household Environment and Child Development in Indonesia

Exploiting panel data from the Indonesian Family Life Study, this paper investigates whether in-home air pollution is linked to child development. While more severe, acute health impacts have been linked to the indoor air pollution in the past, less attention has been paid to long-term outcomes such as height for age. We instrument for fuel use two ways, with fuel prices and with consumption of rice, an inelastically consumed staple food, finding effects that are robustly significant and roughly consistent in size across specifications, even considering alternative specifications such as OLS and matching procedures. Economists and policymakers should not neglect the long-term human capital development implications of improving indoor air quality.