Does More Cash in Conditional Cash Transfer Programs Always Lead to Larger Impacts on School Attendance?

Jul 19, 2026

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Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have demonstrated sizable effects on school enrollment, yet program-design elements explaining these outcomes remain unclear. This paper examines a Cambodia program that delivered cash payments of varying magnitudes to comparable households, using a sharp regression discontinuity design. Results show that a modest transfer, roughly 2% of median consumption, substantially increased school attendance by about 25 percentage points, while a larger transfer did not further raise attendance.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages26

Reading Time1 h 6 min

Introduction

Evidence and popularity of CCTs

Program-design features and transfer magnitude

Cambodia case and identification strategy

Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Does more cash in conditional cash transfer programs always lead to larger impacts on school attendance? 􀁨 Deon Filmer The World Bank Norbert Schady Inter-American Development Bank May 11, 2010 Abstract There is considerable evidence that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs can have large impacts on school enrollment, including in very poor countries. However, little is known about what features of program design account for the observed outcomes. In this paper we analyze the impact of a program in Cambodia that made payments of varying magnitude to otherwise comparable households. The identification is based on a sharp regression discontinuity design. We find that a modest cash transfer, equivalent to approximately 2 percent of the consumption of the median recipient household, had a substantial impact on school attendance, approximately 25 percentage points. A somewhat larger transfer did not raise attendance rates above this level. 􀁨 We thank Luis Benveniste, Francisco Ferreira, Berk Ozler, two referees, and the editor Mark Rosenzweig for helpful comments, and the World Bank Education Team for Cambodia and the members of Scholarship Team of the Royal Government of Cambodia’s Ministry of Education for valuable assistance in carrying out this work. This work benefited from funding from the World Bank’s Research Support Budget (P094396) as well as the BankNetherlands Partnership Program Trust Fund (TF055023) . The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors; they do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, their Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. 1. Introduction Conditional cash transfers (CCTs)—programs that transfer cash to poor households, conditional on them making pre-specified investments in the education and (sometimes) health of their children—have become very popular in developing countries. A recent review (Fiszbeinand Schady 2009) estimates that at least 29 developing countries have a CCT in place. In many countries, including in Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico, the CCT is the largest social assistance program, covering millions of households, and accounting for as much as 0.5 percent of GDP. There is by now a good deal of evidence that indicates that CCTs can have significant impacts on the school enrollment of children in recipient households. That evidence spans countries as varied as Mexico (Schultz 2004), Ecuador (Schady and Araujo 2008), Brazil (de Janvry, Finan, and Sadoulet 2008), Colombia (Attanasio, Fitzsimmons, and Gómez 2005), Nicaragua (Maluccio and Flores 2005), Pakistan (Chaudhury and Parajuli 2008), and Cambodia (Filmer and Schady 2008). The estimated program effects can be quite large—for example, Filmer and Schady (2008) estimate that a program that gave transfers to poor families in Cambodia conditional on them keeping teenage girls enrolled in school raised enrollment rates by between 20 and 30 percentage points. Despite the popularity of CCTs, little is known about what features of program design—including the amount of the cash that is transferred, how frequently conditions are monitored, whether non-complying households are penalized, and the gender of the recipients ofthe cash (often, but not always, the mother of the child)—account for the observed outcomes. And yet, identifying the features of the CCT ―package‖ that explain the increase in school enrollment is important to designing more effective and efficient programs. This paper analyzes the impact of one feature of program design—namely, the magnitude of the transfer. Evidence on the relative importance of the cash amount in a CCT is scarce. De Janvry and Sadoulet (2006) focus on the much-studied PROGRESA program in Mexico. They exploit the fact that there is a cap on the total amount of transfers that a household can receive from t

FAQs

What question does the paper investigate about conditional cash transfers?

It asks whether providing more cash in CCT programs always produces larger impacts on school attendance.

How does the paper identify the causal effect of transfer size?

It uses a sharp regression discontinuity design based on a Cambodia program that varied payment magnitudes across comparable households.

What did the study find about modest versus larger cash transfers?

A modest transfer increased school attendance by about 25 percentage points, while a somewhat larger transfer did not raise attendance rates beyond that level.

Jul 19, 2026

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