81199
                  enGender Impact: The World Bank’s Gender Impact Evaluation Database



          Are Cash Transfers Made to Women Spent Like Other Sources of Income

      Author(s)            Norbert Schady, Jose Rosero
      Contact              nschady@worldbank.org

      Country              Ecuador

  Organizing Theme         Voice and Agency, Economic Opportunities and Access to Assets

       Status              Completed

Intervention Category      Cash Transfer

       Sector              Social Protection
                           How cash transfers made to women are used has important implications for models of
                           household behavior and for the design of social programs. In this paper, the authors use
                           the randomized introduction of an unconditional cash transfer to poor women in rural
                           Ecuador to analyze the effect of transfers on the food Engel curve. There are two main
                           findings. First, the authors show that households randomly assigned to receive Bono de
                           Desarrollo Humano (BDH) transfers have a significantly higher food share in expenditures
                           than those that were randomly assigned to the control group. Second, they show that the
      Abstract             rising food share among BDH beneficiaries is found among households that have both
                           adult males and females, but not among households that only have adult females.
                           Bargaining power between men and women is likely to be important in mixed-adult
                           households, but not among female-only households, where there are no men to bargain
                           with. Finally, the authors show that within mixed-adult households, program effects are
                           only significant in households in which the initial bargaining capacity of women was likely
                           to be weak. This pattern of results is consistent with an increase in the bargaining power of
                           women in households that received BDH transfers.
 Gender Connection         Gender Focused Intervention

  Gender Outcomes          Nutrition, intrahousehold bargaining

     IE Design             Randomized Control Trial
                           In 2003, the government of Ecuador launched a new unconditional cash transfer
                           program—the Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH)—targeted to poor families with
                           children (so means-tested). The transfer is small—only $15 per month per family—but it
    Intervention
                           represents a non-trivial 10 percent increase in family expenditure for the average eligible
                           family. Transfers are distributed through the banking system, and are given directly to
                           mothers rather than fathers.
                           In 2003, the Bono Solidario cash transfer program was slowly replaced with BDH. As
 Intervention Period
                           opposed to the Bono Solidario, the BDH is means tested.
  Sample population        There are 773 households in rural areas in the BDH evaluation surveys.
                           The control group, in theory, should not have received the transfer. In reality, due to
Comparison conditions
                           administrative errors, the 42% of the control group received the transfer.


   Last updated: 14 August 2013                                                                        1
                   enGender Impact: The World Bank’s Gender Impact Evaluation Database



    Unit of analysis        Household Level

   Evaluation Period        June 2003-March2005
                            The main finding of the paper is that households that were randomly assigned to receive
                            cash transfers have significantly higher food shares after the program. The average
                            treatment effect is between 10.5-12.6 p.p, which is a very large effect. These program
                            effects on the food share are only found among mixed-adult households, and not among
                            female-only households. When the sample is limited to mixed-adult households, significant
        Results
                            program effects are only found among households where the bargaining capacity of women
                            was initially likely to be weaker. Taken together, these results are hard to reconcile with the
                            unitary model of the household, in which all resources are pooled. Rather, they suggest that
                            the bargaining position of women improved after they received transfers, and that women
                            were then better able to influence the pattern of expenditures.
                            There was a great deal of contamination in the study. Program takeup was 78%, however,
Primary study limitations
                            42% of households assigned to the control group received the transfer.
    Funding Source
                            Schady, N., & Rosero, J. (2008). Are cash transfers made to women spent like other
                            sources of income?. Economics Letters, 101(3), 246-248.
      Reference(s)          and
                            Rosero, J., & Schady, N. (2007). Are cash transfers made to women spent like other
                            sources of income?. World
    Link to Studies
                            http://elibrary.worldbank.org/content/workingpaper/10.1596/1813-9450-4282
       Microdata




    Last updated: 14 August 2013                                                                        2