88 CHAPTER 6
the transfers (the comparison group), the enrollment figure dropped by 4 percentage points for the under-eleven-year-olds and about 2 percentage points for eleven- to fourteen-year-olds (Miller et al. 2007).1 From March 2007 to March/April 2008, the percentage of children newly enrolled in school was more than twice as high in intervention households (8.3 percent) as in com- parison households (3.4 percent). Over this same period, a total of 96 percent of children from intervention households were enrolled in school compared to 84 percent of children in comparison households, representing a difference in enrollment of 12 percentage points (Miller, Tsoka, and Reichert 2008, 29). Although absences were roughly equal at baseline, after a year, children
from households receiving the Mchinji cash transfer were absent 1.3 days fewer (the previous month) than children from comparison households. Drop- out rates were higher in the comparison group (5 percent) than among inter- vention children (2 percent). The transfer may also have had an effect on school performance: 14 percent of intervention household heads reported that their children had excellent school performance compared to 10 percent of comparison household heads; however, the study could not confirm these findings with school officials due to inadequate data from local schools (Miller, Tsoka, and Reichert 2008, 29–31). The 2006 evaluation of the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) did not measure changes in rates of school enrollment or attendance but rather asked whether households enrolled more children and kept children in school longer in the present year versus the previous (pre-program) year. Thirty-nine percent of households reported that they had enrolled more chil- dren, with 32.6 percent attributing this to the PSNP. Almost 50 percent of households said that they had kept children in school longer rather than with- drawing them when cash or food was short, with 43 percent attributing this to the program (Devereux et al. 2006, 36). A more recent and larger evaluation of the PSNP found that households receiving at least half the transfer amount they should have received over a one-year period showed a large increase in the school attendance of boys ages six through sixteen, of 12 percentage points, increasing boys’ average attendance rate to 51 percent relative to 39 percent in the control group.2 However, there was almost no impact on girls’
1 The group against which the intervention group was measured is referred to as a comparison group rather than a control group because the intervention and comparison households were not demographically identical at baseline; children appear to have been prioritized in the intervention areas, whereas elderly households appear to have been prioritized in the comparison areas. How- ever, the authors of the study point out that the households were the same in terms of monthly
expenditures, food insecurity, and asset ownership (Miller, Tsoka, and Reichert 2008, viii). 2 Half the transfer amount was equivalent to 90 birr per person (at a wage of 6 birr per day, equiva- lent to 15 days’ work per person). Households were intended to receive up to 5 days’ work per month for each household member, but actual employment, as well as payments, were less than that planned.
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