unite for children An Unconditional Government Social Cash Transfer in Africa Does not Increase Fertility Tia Palermo UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti / Stony Brook University (SUNY) With Sudhanshu Handa, Amber Peterman, Leah Prencipe, David Seidenfeld on behalf of the Zambia CGP Evaluation Team d April 1, 2016 Population Association of America Annual Meeting, Washington, DC
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unite for children
An Unconditional Government Social Cash Transfer in Africa Does not Increase Fertility
Tia PalermoUNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti / Stony Brook University (SUNY)
With Sudhanshu Handa, Amber Peterman, Leah Prencipe, David Seidenfeld on behalf of the Zambia CGP Evaluation Team d
April 1, 2016Population Association of America Annual Meeting, Washington, DC
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Introduction: The rise of ‘cash’ in sub-Saharan Africa . . .• Explosion of Social Cash Transfers (SCTs):
718 million people enrolled in SCTs globally (Honorati et al. 2015) Approximately half (21) SSA countries had an unconditional
cash transfer (UCT) in 2010 -- this doubled (40) by 2014
• Programs are ‘home-grown’: Target on poverty and vulnerability; greater role of community Unconditional or ‘soft conditions’ Larger evidence base on impacts than any other region: more
• Pathways and heterogeneous impacts• Mythbusting research• Increase fertility• Create dependency (reduce labor force participation)• Wasteful alcohol and tobacco spending• Too costly• Fully consumed, rather than used for investment
• Food security• Productive activities• Resilience• Education• Nutrition and health
• Safe transitions to adulthood
• Stress, mental health• Time preferences• Women’s empowerment
(savings, investment, decision-making)
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Current study aim
Examine impacts of Zambia Cash Grant Programme (CGP) on fertility
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Theory
• Couples may update goals for quality and quantity of children (Becker, 1960) based on change to economic situation induced by cash transfer (Todd et al. 2012).
• Increase quantity if children are “normal goods” – recent empirical evidence to support this (Black et al. 2013)
• Period-specific decisions such as contraceptive use may change in response to perceptions of link between transfer and child in household (Stecklov et al. 2007; Todd et al. 2012).
• Contraceptive use may increase through increased income to access services or women’s increased ability to exert preferences (empowerment).
• Transfers may delay sexual debut, pregnancy and marriage among adolescents
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Existing evidence: government programmes• Largely do not increase fertility—experimental evidence from
• Exceptions: (1) positive impact on fertility in Honduras [2-4 percentage point increase in probability of birth (Stecklov et al. 2007)] and (2) non-experimental study from Mexico [5% increase in fertility (Arenas et al. 2015)]
• Cash transfers increase birth spacing• South Africa: HR=0.66 (Rosenberg et al. 2015)• Nicaragua: HR=0.68 (Todd et al. 2012)• Transfers delay sexual debut and first pregnancy among
adolescents: Kenya and South Africa (Handa et al. 2015; Heinrich et al. 2012)
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Data: Zambia Child Grant Programme (CGP) Evaluation• Implemented by the Ministry of Community Development and Social
Services (MCDSS) starting in 2010• Geographically targeted to households with child under 5 years in
three districts (Kalabo, Shangombo, and Kaputa)• Unconditional transfer: 60 Kwacha per month (12 USD) per
household• Six stated program goals: 1) income, 2) food security, 3) productive
assets, 4) reduce child malnutrition, 3) primary school enrollment and attendance, 6) reduce under 5 child mortality and morbidity
• Evaluation (2,500 households)• Randomized Control Trial with 90 clusters (45 T, 45 C)• Baseline (2010), 24-month (2012), 36-month (2013) and 48-month
(2014)
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MeasuresOutcomes Total live births Ever pregnant Ever had miscarriage/still
birth/abortion Contraceptive use Household counts of children aged 0-
• No impacts of a cash transfer programme (targeted to families with child <5 years) on fertility over a four-year period.
• First study to evaluate fertility impacts of an unconditional cash transfer as reported from fertility histories of individual women in Africa using an experimental design
• Findings consistent with existing evidence in the region
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• Article published: Palermo, Tia, et al. "Unconditional government social cash transfer in Africa does not increase fertility." Journal of Population Economics (2015): 1-29.
Transfer Project is a multi-organizational initiative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Save the Children-United Kingdom (SC-UK), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) in collaboration with national governments, and other national and international researchers.
Current core funding for the Transfer Project comes from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), as well as from staff time provided by UNICEF, FAO, SC-UK and UNC-CH. Evaluation design, implementations and analysis are all funded in country by government and development partners. Top-up funds for extra survey rounds have been provided by: 3IE - International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (Ghana, Malawi, Zimbabwe); DFID - UK Department of International Development (Ghana, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe); EU - European Union (Lesotho, Malawi, Zimbabwe); Irish Aid (Malawi, Zambia); KfW Development Bank (Malawi); NIH - The United States National Institute of Health (Kenya); Sida (Zimbabwe); and the SDC - Swiss Development Cooperation (Zimbabwe); USAID – United States Agency for International Development (Ghana, Malawi); US Department of Labor (Malawi, Zambia). The body of research here has benefited from the intellectual input of a large number of individuals. For full research teams by country, see: https://transfer.cpc.unc.edu/
• Black, D. A., Kolesnikova, N., Sanders, S. G., & Taylor, L. J. (2013). Are children “normal”? The review of economics and statistics, 95(1), 21-33.
• Handa, S., Peterman, A., Huang, C., Halpern, C. T., Pettifor, A., & Thirumurthy, H. (2015). Impact of the Kenya Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children on Early Pregnancy and Marriage of Adolescent Girls. Social Science & Medicine, 141, 36-45.
• Heinrich, C., Hoddinott, J., Samson, M., Mac Quene, K., van Nikerk, I., & Renaud, B. (2012). The South African Child Support Grant Impact Assessment. South Africa: Department of Social Development, South African Social Security Agency, UNICEF.
• Palermo et al. (2015). Unconditional Government Social Cash Transfer in Africa does not increase Fertility. Innocenti Working Paper 2015-09.
• Rosenberg, M., Pettifor, A., Nguyen, N., Westreich, D., Bor, J., Barnighausen, T., . . . Kahn, K. (2015). Relationship between receipt of a social protection grant for a child and second pregnancy rates among South African women.
• Stecklov, G., Winters, P., Todd, J., & Regalia, F. (2007). Unintended effects of poverty programmes on childbearing in less developed countries: experimental evidence from Latin America. Population Studies, 61(2), 125-140.
• Todd, J. E., Winters, P., & Stecklov, G. (2012). Evaluating the impact of conditional cash transfer programs on fertility: the case of the Red de Protección Social in Nicaragua. Journal of Population Economics, 25(1), 267-290.