Juan Miguel Villa

Life skills, employability and training for disadvantaged youth: Evidence from a randomized evaluation design

This paper presents an impact evaluation of a revamped version of the Dominican Republic’s youth training program Juventud y Empleo. The paper analyzes the impact of the program on traditional labor market outcomes and on outcomes related to youth behavior and life style, expectations about the future and socio-emotional skills. In terms of labor market outcomes, the program has a positive impact on job formality for men of about 17 percent and there is also a seven percent increase in monthly earnings among those employed. However, there are no overall impacts on employment rates. Regarding non-labor market outcomes, the program reduces teenage pregnancy by five percentage points in the treatment group (about 45 percent), which is consistent with an overall increase in youth expectations about the future. The program also has a positive impact on non-cognitive skills as measured by three different scales. Scores improve between 0.08 and 0.16 standard deviations with the program. Although recent progress noted in the literature suggests that socio-emotional skills increase employability and quality of employment, the practical significance of the impacts is unclear, as there is only weak evidence that the life skills measures used are associated to better labor market performance. This is an area of growing interest and relevance that requires further research.JEL codesJ24, J64, O15, O17.

Evaluating antipoverty transfer programmes in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Better policies? Better politics?

Abstract Two broad explanations can be offered for the incidence of impact evaluations in antipoverty transfer programmes in developing countries. The first, and arguably dominant, explanation suggests this is a consequence of a shift towards evidence-based development policy. A second explanation emphasises the complementary role of policy competition and political factors in motivating evaluations. The paper assesses the relevance of the latter in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa through (i) a comparison of evaluation practice and (ii) the analysis of a new database of flagship antipoverty transfer programmes.

Antipoverty Transfers and Labour Force Participation Effects

Abstract The paper examines labour market outcome effects from participation in Familias en Accion in urban areas, a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia. There is considerable interest in the potential impact of antipoverty transfers on labour market outcomes in developing countries. The available literature finds at best very marginal effects, both positive and negative, of participation on labour market outcomes. Relying on a regression discontinuity design and a large panel dataset, the paper finds significant and largely positive effects on labour market outcomes. These effects are heterogeneous in household composition and gender, confirming that the effects of antipoverty transfers on labour supply reflect a re-organisation of household productive resources in response to the transfer.

Economic and Political Inclusion of Human Development Conditional Transfer Programmes in Latin America

Human development conditional transfer programmes have been adopted by a majority of countries in Latin America to address the intergenerational persistence of poverty. Typically, programmes provide regular and reliable transfers in cash to households in poverty, with transfers conditional on children attending school and on household members attending health clinics. Rigorous impact evaluations have established that, on the whole, programmes reach their explicit objectives, especially as regards nutrition, children’s schooling and improved health care utilisation. It is too early to say whether human development programmes will be successful in reducing the intergenerational persistence of poverty in the region. To certain degree, this will depend on whether they contribute to the economic and political inclusion of groups in poverty and extreme poverty. To the extent that improvements in children’s schooling and health state cannot guarantee a successful inclusion in the labour market, or that transfers reinforce longstanding clientelistic practices in the region; the fuller economic and political inclusion of these groups might not materialise. The paper aims to throw light on these issues by assessing existing knowledge on the longer term effects of participation in human development transfer programmes leads on productive capacity, employment and political participation. It finds a mixed picture.

Antipoverty Transfers and Labour Market Outcomes: Regression Discontinuity Design Findings

Abstract The article estimates the impact of Familias en Acción, a human development conditional cash transfer programme, on adult labour market outcomes in urban areas in Colombia. Relying on a regression discontinuity design and a large panel dataset, the article finds significant, largely positive, but heterogeneous programme effects on labour market outcomes. The findings suggest that antipoverty transfers enable a re-allocation of household productive resources among participant households.

The continuous treatment effect of an antipoverty program on children's educational attainment: Colombia's Familias en Accion

Educational attainment is an important element in the formation of human capital. Although many developing countries have made strong efforts to expand the coverage of education services, children in poor households still struggle to attend school on a regular basis. Human development conditional cash transfers (known as CCTs) have emerged in response to this situation in developing countries. While the effects of the CCTs are well known and widely documented, their effects in relation to educational attainment and school participation are still unclear. This paper looks empirically into the continuous treatment effects of participation length in Familias en Accion, a CCT program in Colombia. The paper focuses on the continuous treatment effects on school registration and educational attainment of participants in the program. Although initial results show a fuzzy relationship between the program outcomes and the participation length, the empirical results confirm the fact that a longer exposure to the antipoverty program led to higher school registration rates, accumulation of years of education, and lower child labor participation levels.

The Impact of Eligibility Recertification on Households Excluded from an Antipoverty Programme

The paper provides reliable estimates of the impact of recertification on ineligible households from Colombias Familias en Accion, an antipoverty programme, relying on a regression discontinuity design. We find that exclusion is associated with a reversal of welfare, education attainment, and economic inclusion. The findings are unsurprising when set against expectations from theory and evidence on the impact of social transfer receipt, but have far reaching implications for the design and implementation of exit conditions. Current practice relying on the re-assessment of entry conditions to assess programme exit is shown to be counterproductive.

Poverty Dynamics and Programme Graduation from Social Protection. A Transitional Model for Mexico's Oportunidades Programme

Social protection programmes have emerged as one of the most important anti-poverty policy strategies in developing countries. Their effects on poverty and well-being have been widely studied. Yet, there is limited knowledge on how a transfer programme should respond to the dynamics of poverty. This paper contributes to the existing literature on social protection by providing an analysis of the implications of poverty dynamics for the graduation of beneficiaries of Mexico’s Oportunidades programme. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that provides a framework for a generic graduation condition, to the extent that it can be applied to any other transfer programme with means tests or proxy-means tests. By estimating a Markovian transition model that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity, state dependence, and attrition, and using three rounds of the longitudinal Mexican Family Life Survey, we find that Oportunidades could ‘graduate’ only 28.9 and 26.7 per cent of beneficiary households in urban and rural areas, respectively. Our results also show that the ‘recertification’ or eligibility assessment of Oportunidades—which takes place every three years—could be optimized by conducting it every 3.5 and 4.1 years in urban and rural areas, respectively

The Length of Exposure to Antipoverty Transfer Programmes: What is the Relevance for Children's Human Capital Formation?

Abstract Within social protection, antipoverty transfer programmes have significantly emerged in developing countries since the late 1990s. The effects of long-term participation and the assessment of the response of childrens human capital formation to different levels of exposure are still unclear. This paper initially takes into consideration the Baland and Robinson (2000) human capital investment model to look into the economics of the length of exposure to antipoverty transfers. The model is presented in a framework shaped by the participation of households in a human development conditional cash transfer programme (CCT). An empirical contribution is made by estimating a dose-response function following Hirano and Imbens (2004). In this empirical setting, the length of exposure to Colombias Familias en Accion CCT programme is employed as a continuous treatment affecting parental investment in childrens human capital. The theoretical and empirical results show that a longer exposure to antipoverty programmes leads to a higher accumulation of years of education and school registration rates.