Giuseppe Dachille is a post-doc researcher at the Centre for Economic and International Studies at University of Rome Tor Vergata. He is currently member of the “Understanding Children’s Work” project, focused on child labour issues. His research interests span from Labour Economics to Development Economics and Household Finance. In 2014 he earned a Ph.D. in Econometrics and Empirical Economics from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where he has been adjunct professor of Statistics. He was also researcher at the International Labour Organization and at the Einaudi Institute for Economic and Finance.

Session II - The Heterogeneous impact of cash transfer 26/10/2017 11:45 - 13:45

Revisiting the impact of Prospera on children's activity in Mexico. Evidence from nationally representative data

Existing, largely experimental, evidence on Prospera/Progresa/Oportunidades - one of the largest conditional cash transfers programmes in the world - finds little discernible impact of the programme on child labour in rural areas, close to programme inception. Since the initial experimental phase of the late 1990’s, no solid evidence exists on the impact of the program on children’s activities. This is a substantial gap, as for policy design it is important to assess the impact of the program once it has reached full coverage and also its overall contribution to the promotion of school attendance and to the elimination of child labour. We exploit variation over space and time of the program since its inception, in order to identify its effects. We also consider the role of a large set of other variables ranging from access to quality education to macro-economic conditions. In particular, we make use of nationally representative data on more than 3 million children aged 12 to 17 from the ENE/ENOE labour force surveys between 2000 and 2014 together with administrative data on programme take-up by municipality. We find robust evidence that the programme contributed to a significant, broad-based decline in child labour, especially among younger children (12-14). The overall contribution of this programme to the 9 percentage points fall in child labour observed over this period is estimated to be around 11 percent; also, the contribution to the 15 percentage points increase in schooling over this period is estimated to be around 5 percent.

Other speakers in this session:

Noemi Pace (University Ca’ Foscari of Venice - FAO)
Does “Soft Conditionality” Increase the Impact of Cash Transfers on Desired Outcomes? Evidence
from a Randomized Control Trial in Lesotho

Eleonora Porreca (University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and ICID)
Heterogeneous impact of unconditional cash transfer: evidence from a randomized experiment in
Lesotho

Giuseppe Dachille, (University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and ICID)
Revisiting the impact of Oportunidades/Prospera on children's activity in Mexico. Evidence from
nationally representative data