Does International Child Sponsorship Work?
A Six-Country Study of Impacts on Adult Life
Outcomes
Bruce Wydick, Paul Glewwe, Laine Rutledge,
2013
Outline
• Background
• Study objectives
• Related literature
• Data and Methodology
• Results and Discussions
• Conclusions and Implications
• Comparison with other
papers
Background
• International child sponsorship represents
the most intimate and direct form of
involvement of the wealthy with the poor .
Background
• Estimated current private financial flows to
internationally sponsored children exceeds
US$3 billion
• Compassion International is a leading child
sponsorship organization (3rd largest
globally) currently serving 1.3 million
children in 26 countries
Background
• Compassion program
• benefits sponsored children
receive vary somewhat by
country and even within
countries
• these programs are different
from the standard Conditional
Cash Transfer programs
• children receive most of the
benefits provided
Background
• Compassion program
• selection of children for sponsorship is done locally based on the
following criteria
Study objective
Research Question/objective
• Exploring the impact of child sponsorship on the educational and
employment/leadership outcomes of sponsored children
Related Literature
Literature
• Limited research of impact of sponsorship programs
• Kremer, Moulin, and Namunyu (2003), use a randomized experiment to analyze the impacts of a Dutch child
sponsorship program that funded new classroom construction and provided students a $6 uniform and $3.44
worth of textbooks. They find that student beneficiaries attend school a half year longer and advance to a third
of a grade farther in formal education.
• Most existing data is on the impacts of conditional cash transfers
• Oportunidades program in Mexico usually evaluated
• Behrman, Parker, and Todd (2007) estimate that receiving Oportunidades cash transfers for 5.5 years increased
grades completed by 0.8–1.0 year
• Schultz (2004) estimates that Oportunidades increased formal schooling by 0.66 years 0.72 for girls and 0.64
for boys
Data and
Methodology
Data
• Survey from June 2008 to August 2010
• Study Counties
Uganda
Guatemala
Kenya
Bolivia
India
Philippines
• Sample
1. formerly sponsored children (1,860)
2. unsponsored siblings of formerly sponsored children(3704 )
3. individuals from nonparticipating families in program villages (2,136)
4. individuals from similar, nearby non-program villages (2,444)
Selection criteria for study
• For larger projects, individuals randomly selected to be surveyed from the first 2 or 3 years
of enrollment lists.
• For smaller projects, data collected from all individuals enrolled in the first 2 or 3 years
• Local assistants hired to assist in tracing the households of formerly sponsored individuals
who were on the early enrollment lists
the sample includes both children who were sponsored for many years and children who
dropped out relatively early to avoid bias.
Key outcomes
Education outcomes
Employment and leadership outcomes
• Total years of education
• Primary school completion
• Secondary school completion
• Tertiary completion
• Formal employment
• White collar employment
• Community leadership
• Church leadership
Sample
summary
Expected estimation issues
• Likelihood of spill over of program effects to siblings and
non-treated children in both program and non-program
villages
• More needy children likely to be chosen.
• Children more likely to succeed may be chosen
Cont’d
• The study addressed the bias by using a strict selection criteria which states that
1. sponsored children must be 12 or younger
2. maximum number of children per household between 1 and 3
3. sponsored children must reside within a 30 minute walking distance of program center
• The study performs the analysis using data of children (now adults) who were beneficiaries of the
Compassion International program against their siblings, peers in project communities and peers outside
project communities
Methods
Difference in difference Estimation techniques
• OLS / OLS-FE estimation
• IV-GMM / IV-GMM-FE
Fixed effects also used to control
for unobserved inter household
characteristics that can affect
selection
Instruments used
Interactions between dummies of
Child age at program and sibling
order relative to program start
Main equation
where
yi is the adult outcome of interest for person i,
Ch is a dummy variable indicating a household with a sponsored child,
Cv is a dummy variable indicating residence in a village with the Compassion
program,
and X i is a vector of controls that include gender, age, age squared, birth order,
number of siblings in a family, and mother’s and father’s education
Cont’d
IV justification
• vector of instruments comprising interactions between dummy variables for a
child’s age at program introduction (ACI) and dummy variables for sibling order
relative to program roll-out (SORR)
• dummy variables have strong predictive power for the children chosen by parents
for the program because of parents’ tendency to choose the oldest age-eligible
siblings for sponsorship
• satisfy the exclusion restriction. Authors see no reason why, after controlling for
characteristic variables, a child’s age at the time of program rollout interacted with
SORR should affect adult life outcomes except through its effect on the
probability of sponsorship
Estimation equations
• IV fixed effects
• First stage
• IV-GMM-FE
• First stage
• Second stage
• Second stage
OLS FIXED EFFECTS
program impact
• With Spillover assumptions
• Intra-household spillovers
• Assuming no spillovers
• Intra-village spillovers
program impact with intrahousehold spillovers
program impact- no spillovers
Results and discussion
Summary statistics
Difference-in-difference table (education
outcomes)
There exists significant differences
in educational outcomes between
sponsored children and their
unsponsored siblings as well as all
non-sponsored individuals in
general
Difference-in-difference table (employment
and leadership outcomes)
There exists significant differences in
employment and leadership outcomes
between sponsored children and their
unsponsored siblings as well as all nonsponsored individuals in general
Education outcomes
Education outcomes
Education
outcomes
The Compassion child sponsorship program significantly
• increases years of completed schooling by 1.03–1.46 years
over a baseline of 10.19 years
• increases the probability of primary school completion by
4.0–7.7 percentage points (baseline 88.7 percent),
• increases secondary school completion by 11.6–16.5
percentage points (baseline 44.9 percent),
• Increases university completion by 2.1–2.4 percentage
points (baseline 4.3 percent).
• Results show little to no significant effect of intra family
and intra village spillovers
Employment and leadership outcomes
Employment and leadership outcomes
The Compassion child sponsorship program
significantly
Employment
and leadership
outcomes
• Increases the probability of formal employment
in adulthood by 5.1–6.3 percentage points
• Increases the probability of white collar
employment in adulthood by 6.5–6.7 percentage
points
• Increases the probability of community leader
position in adulthood by 1–2.2 percentage points
(OLS estimates)
• Increases the probability of church leader
position in adulthood by 3.5–6.03 percentage
points (OLS estimates). IV estimates show
negative outcomes (largely insignificant)
Country estimates – educational outcomes
Results for educational
outcomes for individual
countries show that program
effects are larger for all
outcomes in Uganda for
both OLS & OLS household
fixed effects
Country estimates – years of schooling by gender
Results show that program effects
in terms of years of schooling are
larger for the gender with the
lower baseline value. program
effects are higher for boys in
Philippines and India with lower
baseline values. In Uganda,
Guatemala, and Bolivia where girls
have lower baseline years of
schooling, program effect is higher
for girls.
Robustness checks
• for the education and employment outcomes, estimates that limit the sample to
those over age 25 yield similar results and significance
• Results from using different instruments yield nearly identical estimates for the
educational outcomes.
• Estimates for the education and employment variables on sponsored children who
had no older siblings yield coefficients that are generally similar to those in the data.
Conclusions and
Implications
Conclusions & implications
• Compassion International sponsorship program has significant implications on the adult
educational and employment/leadership outcomes of sponsored children.
• increases secondary school completion by 11.6–16.5 percentage points
• increases years of completed schooling by 1.03–1.46 years over a baseline of 10.19
years
• Increases the probability of formal employment in adulthood by 5.1–6.3 percentage
points
• Intra-household and intra-village spill overs are generally statistically significant.
Conclusions & implications
• Generalization?
• Different sponsorship programs have different targets hence the results
from this study cannot be generalized for all sponsorship programs
• Policy?
• Sponsorship seems to work but with no spill-over effects, can government
implement this?
Comparison with other
papers
2. INCENTIVES TO LEARN
Michael Kremer, Edward Miguel, and
Rebecca Thornton (2009)
Secondary
Papers
3. Role of cash in conditional cash
transfer programs for child health,
growth, and development: an analysis
of Mexico’s Oportunidades
Lia C H Fernald, Paul J Gertler, Lynnette
M Neufeld (2008)
INCENTIVES TO LEARN
Michael Kremer, Edward
Miguel, and Rebecca
Thornton
Summary
background
• Girls’ Scholarship Program (GSP)
carried out by a Dutch nongovernmental organization (NGO) ICS Africa, in two
rural Kenyan districts, Busia and Teso.
• NGO awarded scholarships to highest-scoring 15% of grade 6 girls
in program schools within each district
• Scholarship winners selected based on their total tests score on districtwide
exams
Study objectives
• To estimate the impact of a merit scholarship program for girls
in Kenyan primary schools
Data and Methodology
Data
• Randomized control trial of over 5,000 students
• Two main program districts
• Test score data obtained from the District Education Offices (DEO) in
each program district
• school participation data based on unannounced checks-one
in September or October 2001 and one in each of the three terms of the
2002 academic year.
• Survey data collected in 2002
Data and Methodology
Methods
• Ordinary Least squares (Differences in differences)
• Empirical strategy
• Reduced form equation
• β1 captures the average program impact on the population targeted
Main Findings
positive program impacts on academic performance:
girls eligible for scholarships in program schools had
significantly higher test scores than comparison schoolgirls
Teacher attendance improved significantly in program
schools
positive program externalities among girls with low pretest
scores, who were unlikely to win in both districts
boys in one district (Busia) experienced significant test score
gains even though they were ineligible for the scholarship
Role of cash in conditional cash transfer programs for
child health, growth, and development: an analysis of
Mexico’s Oportunidades
Lia C H Fernald, Paul J Gertler, Lynnette M Neufeld
Summary
background
• Over 200 million children under less than 5 years are not fulfilling their
potential for growth, cognition, or socioemotional development
• conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes is a means to address the larger
issue of poverty alleviation by developing country governments
• CCT programs are aimed at improving poor families lives through
interventions in health, nutrition, and education
• Families enrolled in CCT programmes receive cash in exchange for complying
with certain conditions
Study objectives
• to examine the impact of cash transfers on child health, growth,
and development outcomes in Mexico's conditional cash
transfer program, known as Oportunidades
• determine whether receiving more money (higher cumulative
transfers) in Oportunidades was associated with improvements in child
growth, health, and development outcomes.
Data
Quasi-experimental design
Data and
Methodology
Survey data from 2 periods- 1997 and 2003
Sample restricted to children who had been Oportunidades
beneficiaries their whole lives.
Analysis not based on beneficiaries vs non-beneficiaries but
rather relationship between transfers accumulated and child
outcomes
Data and Methodology
Methods
• Ordinary least squares
• Logistic regression
• controlled directly for the number of household members and
proportion of children in each age category at baseline
• controlled for a wide range of household-level and community-level
variables
Main Findings
A doubling ofcumulative cash transfers resulted in a statistically significant increase in heightfor-age Z score
A doubling of cumulative cash transfers resulted in a statistically significant reduction in
stunting prevalence as well as being overweight
A doubling of cumulative cash transfers resulted in a statistically significant improvements in
endurance, long and short-term memory, visual integration and language development
There was no association between increased cash transfers and the number of sick days in the
4 weeks before the survey, with the skill component of motor development, or with
haemoglobin concentration.
INCENTIVES TO LEAR
N
ROLE OF CASH IN
CONDITIONAL CASH
TRANSFER PROGRAMS
FOR
CHILD HEALTH, GROWTH,
AND DEVELOPMENT
PAPER
DOES INTERNATIONAL
CHILD SPONSORSHIP
WORK?
Program
Compassion International Girls’ Scholarship
program
Program (GSP)
Oportunidades CCT prog
ram
Focus
School materials, health
care
Merit scholarships
for program schools
Cash transfers to poor
families
Experiment
type
Randomized control trial
Randomized control
trial
Quasi-experimental
design
PAPER
DOES INTERNATIONAL
CHILD SPONSORSHIP
WORK?
INCENTIVES TO LEAR
N
Methods
DiD (OLS, OLS-fixed effect DiD (OLS)
IV-GMM, IV-GMM fixed
effects)
ROLE OF CASH IN
CONDITIONAL CASH
TRANSFER PROGRAMS
FOR
CHILD HEALTH, GROWTH,
AND DEVELOPMENT
OLS
Logistic regression
Analysis focus Beneficiaries vs non
beneficiaries
Program schools vs
non program schools
Focuses on transfers
accumuulated
Spillovers
Significant spillover
effects
Not covered
Largely no spillover
effects