Working Papers

Abstract: We conducted a randomized control trial in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education, health, and household welfare outcomes. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional and were given to either mothers or fathers. Conditionality was linked to older children enrolling in school and attending regularly and younger children receiving preventive health check-ups. Compared to the control group, cash transfers improve children’s education and health and household socioeconomic conditions. For school enrollment and most child health outcomes, conditional cash transfers outperform unconditional cash transfers. Giving cash to mothers does not lead to significantly better child health or education outcomes, and there is evidence that money given to fathers improves young children’s health, particularly during years of poor rainfall. Cash transfers to fathers also yields relatively more household investment in livestock, cash crops, and improved housing.

 

Abstract: Using data we collected in rural Burkina Faso, we examine how children’s cognitive abilities influence households’ decisions to invest in their education. To address the endogeneity of child ability measures, we use rainfall shocks experienced in utero or early childhood to instrument for ability. Negative shocks in utero lead to 0.24 standard deviations lower ability z-scores, corresponding with a 38 percent enrollment drop and a 49 percent increase in child labor hours compared with their siblings. Negative education impacts are largest for in utero shocks, diminished for shocks before age two, and have no impact for shocks after age two. We link the fetal origins hypothesis and sibling rivalry literatures by showing that shocks experienced in utero not only have direct negative impacts on the child’s cognitive ability (fetal origins hypothesis) but also negatively impact the child through the effects on sibling rivalry resulting from the cognitive differences.

 

Abstract: The authors conduct a randomized experiment in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional. Families under the conditional schemes were required to have their children ages 7-15 enrolled in school and attending classes regularly. There were no such requirements under the unconditional programs. The results indicate that unconditional and conditional cash transfer programs have a similar impact increasing the enrollment of children who are traditionally favored by parents for school participation, including boys, older children, and higher ability children. However, the conditional transfers are significantly more effective than the unconditional transfers in improving the enrollment of “marginal children” who are initially less likely to go to school, such as girls, younger children, and lower ability children. Thus, conditionality plays a critical role in benefiting children who are less likely to receive investments from their parents.

 

Abstract: Sibling rivalry occurs when siblings compete for parental investments. We examine how rivalry among biological siblings, who may not be co-resident, differs from rivalry among co-resident children and how this affects school enrollment for children in Burkina Faso. We test the hypothesis that the value of child labor in home production contributes to rivalry by comparing households that differ in their access to child fostering networks. Fostering moves child labor between residences, decoupling a child’s location from the value of their time. We find rivalry influences enrollment only in families who do not foster and are thus constrained in their ability to equalize child labor supply and demand. In those households, the relative productivity of resident children impacts time allocation decisions and subsequently enrollment. We find no evidence of rivalry in unconstrained households. Thus, sibling rivalry is better understood as residential rivalry, stemming from constraints on child labor availability.

 

Abstract: To examine the impact of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide on children’s schooling, we combine two cross-sectional household surveys collected before and after the genocide. The identification strategy uses pre-war data to control for an age group’s baseline schooling and exploits variation across provinces in the intensity of killings and which children’s cohorts were school-aged when exposed to the war. We find a strong negative impact of the genocide on schooling, with exposed children completing one-half year less education representing an 18.3 percent decline. The effect is robust to including control variables, alternative sources for genocide intensity, and an instrumental variables strategy.

 

Abstract:  Children growing up away from their biological parents may experience lower human capital investment. This paper measures the impact of child fostering on school enrollment using fixed effects regressions to address the endogeneity of fostering. Data collection by the author involved tracking and interviewing the sending and receiving household participating in each fostering exchange, allowing a comparison of foster children with their non-fostered biological siblings. Young foster children are 17.5 and 17.9 percent more likely to be enrolled after fostering than their host and biological siblings, respectively. This schooling improvement translates into a long-run improvement in educational and occupational attainment.

 

Abstract:  Previous research using plot-level agricultural data from Burkina Faso found that the allocation of resources within African households was Pareto inefficient, contradicting most collective models of intrahousehold bargaining.  I provide an explanation for these households' Pareto inefficient behavior and I test its robustness using an alternative dataset also collected in Burkina Faso.  Households experiencing exogenous negative rainfall shocks are less likely in that year to exhibit Pareto inefficient intrahousehold allocations.  These negative rainfall shocks are correlated with increases in labor resources allocated to the wife's plots, further confirming that in bad years, households try to avoid losses from Pareto inefficiency.

 

Abstract: Households are dynamic while most surveys only collect information on individuals who are present at a single point in time. We exploit a unique and thorough household membership enumeration in Burkina Faso to consider the analytical costs of the typical static household roster. We document that households are extremely fluid with 10 percent of individuals spending sometime away over a three year period, averaging 16 of the 36 months away. The residency status of persons age 16 to 24 is most in flux. A more complete enumeration offers substantial analytical richness that is especially important for the analysis of issues that are intertwined with who is present in the household, such as the measurement of income inequality and the nature of sibling interactions in education decisions. We find that evidence of sibling rivalry in Burkina Faso appears to owe to the correlation between the presence of sisters in a household and non-agricultural income. We argue for more detailed and thorough measurement of household composition in future multi-purpose household surveys.

 

Abstract: We consider the impact of self-reported idiosyncratic agricultural shocks on schooling decisions. We use a novel dataset from Burkina Faso that includes more detail about non-resident family members than is typical in living standards surveys. This data allows us to evaluate the importance of endogenous household composition (specifically, child mobility) and intra-family insurance in understanding the impact of shocks on schooling. We find that ex-ante insurance fails to fully buffer the impact of agricultural income shocks, especially for young children. Some children migrate when their residence experiences a shock.  This seems to protect their schooling status, but overall the extent of child migration is small enough that it has a minimal influence on estimates of the impact of shocks on schooling. Family networks seem to offer partial insurance, and the data do not reject full risk-sharing within family networks that are identified via fostering connections.