Calendrier du 03 juillet 2018
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 03/07/2018 de 12:30 à 13:30
R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MACOURS Karen (PSE & CEPR)
Young Women’s Labor Market and Fertility Outcomes 10 years after a CCT
écrit avec Tania Barham, John Maluccio
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are some of the most popular policy instruments to increase investment in nutrition, health, and education in developing countries. The principal motivation underlying CCTs has implicitly and often explicitly been that investment in human capital will help improve the lives of the poor in the longer term, with the expectation that it can lead to higher income generating potential in adulthood for beneficiary children. Whether and how such potential materializes remains an open question. For girls of school-going ages, CCT do not only provided incentives and means to stay in school longer, but also may affect fertility outcomes through improved nutrition (with implications for the onset of puberty). Understanding the later mechanism is important, as young women’s decisions regarding economic and reproductive activities tend to be closely intertwined. This paper exploits an experimental design and a 10-year tracking survey for a CCT program in Nicaragua that introduced random variation in the age of exposure that allows isolating the fertility mechanism. For a cohort of 9 to 12 year old girls, the variation in age of exposure does not lead to differences in educational outcomes, but leads to differential impacts on fertility, and subsequent long-term labor market outcomes and income. While the differential impacts are modest, they suggest that health and nutrition components of CCT programs are important to account for when analyzing long-term impacts on labor market outcomes.