Smarter through Social Protection? Evaluating the Impact of Ethiopia's Safety-Net on Child Cognitive Abilities
Looks at the impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme on child cognitive achievement
Abstract
The authors provide new estimates of the impact of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia on child cognitive achievement in the medium term. The programme is the second larget in Africa, and has been rolled out to almost 10 million beneficaries since 2005. The authors exploit 4 rounds of the Young Lives panel data spanning 2002-2013 and find a small but significant effect of the programme on cognitive achievement as measured by numeracy skills. They examine heterogeneity of impacts via “graduation” from the scheme, and find a positive effect on children in households that graduated just before 2013, but none for children in households that remain in the programme.
Young Lives is an international study of childhood poverty, following the lives of 12,000 children in 4 countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam) over 15 years. Young Lives is funded by the UK Department for International Development.
Citation
Marta Favara, Catherine Porter, Tassew Woldehanna (August 2017) Smarter through Social Protection? Evaluating the Impact of Ethiopia’s Safety-Net on Child Cognitive Abilities. IZA Institute of Labor Economics Discussion paper 10972