Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education

Najy Benhassine, Florencia Devoto, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, Victor Pouliquen

NBER Working Paper No. 19227
Issued in July 2013
NBER Program(s):Program on Children, Development Economics Program, Economics of Education Program

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have been shown to increase human capital investments, but their standard features make them expensive. We use a large randomized experiment in Morocco to estimate an alternative government-run program, a "labeled cash transfer" (LCT): a small cash transfer made to fathers of school-aged children in poor rural communities, not conditional on school attendance but explicitly labeled as an education support program. We document large gains in school participation. Adding conditionality and targeting mothers make almost no difference. The program increased parents' belief that education was a worthwhile investment, a likely pathway for the results.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w19227

Published: Najy Benhassine & Florencia Devoto & Esther Duflo & Pascaline Dupas & Victor Pouliquen, 2015. "Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 86-125, August. citation courtesy of

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