Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

REACHING THE MARGINALIZEDLevelling the playing fieldcan create incentives supporting children’seducation, health and nutrition. They can betargeted not just at the very poor, but also atthe most marginalized groups or regions.Cash transfer programmes have grown enormouslyover the past decade. Many of these programmesare conditional on specific behaviour, such askeeping children in school and attending healthclinics. In some countries, including Brazil andMexico, nationwide social assistance programmestransfer between 1% and 2% of national income totargeted households. In other countries, conditionalcash transfer programmes are more localized andoften project-based. The degree to which educationfigures in transfer conditionality and support varies.Some social protection programmes provide directsupport for education, including stipends, bursaries,fee waivers and funding for transport and books(Grosh et al., 2008); (see previous section). Inother cases, the education benefits associatedwith social protection are incidental, resultingfrom employment creation, nutrition programmesor other measures that enable households to getthrough difficult periods.Comparisons have to be made with some cautionbecause of data constraints, and differences inevaluation methodology and in the programmesthemselves. Even so, evaluations of socialprotection programmes point to wide-rangingpositive effects (see Annex, p. 294).Evaluations of social protection programmes havedocumented a range of positive effects, albeit withmarked variation across countries and groups. InMexico, Oportunidades has had a significant impacton children making the transition from primary tosecondary school, especially in rural areas (Fiszbeinet al., 2009). Nicaragua’s Red de Protección Socialwas targeted at children aged 7 to 13 who had notyet completed grade 4 of primary school. Evaluationresults indicated a thirteen percentage pointincrease in school enrolment, with the extremepoor registering the most marked gains (Villanger,2008). Employment guarantee programmes havealso delivered results, often in contexts markedby deep poverty and acute vulnerability. Ethiopia’sProductive Safety Net Programme is an example.Evaluations suggest that around 15% of cashpayments have gone to education, while half ofbeneficiary households report being able to keepchildren in school longer as a result of thetransfers (Slater et al., 2006) (Box 3.23).Social protection is not a simple antidote tomarginalization. Levels of poverty, financingcapacity and institutional factors have a bearingon the type of social protection intervention likelyto deliver results in various contexts. The costand effectiveness of any programme will beshaped by factors such as:the scale of transfer;terms of the transfer; andtargeting of beneficiaries.The scale of transfer. Transfer levels varyconsiderably. One survey found that transfersranged from around 8% to 23% of the nationalpoverty line in Latin America and from 5% to 30%in sub-Saharan Africa (Yablonski and O’Donnell,2009). Large-scale conditional cash transferprogrammes in Brazil and Mexico have had amarked effect on poverty partly because the moneythey provide represents a significant increment inthe income of the very poor. Ethiopia’s ProductiveSafety Net Programme boosts child educationand reduces child labour when the transfersto households are sufficiently large.When it comes to supporting poor and vulnerablechildren, more is clearly better. But policy-makersalso have to consider the marginal benefit ofincreasing transfers and the potential trade-offbetween reaching more people and providing largertransfers. In the Cambodia Education Sector SupportProject scholarship programme, the 25% of studentsdeemed most at risk of dropping out receivedUS$60 and the group next most at risk US$45.Comparing beneficiaries with non-beneficiaries,an evaluation found that while the US$45 transfersignificantly increased the probability of a girl beingin school, the additional US$15 had a modestadditional effect (Filmer and Schady, 2009). In otherwords, in this case there were diminishing marginalreturns to the investment.Terms of the transfer. Many social protectionprogrammes provide cash transfers to createincentives for behavioural change. To put it crudely,parents get paid for keeping children in school,taking them to health clinics and presenting themfor weighing at nutrition centres. The size oftransfer influences the strength of the incentivecreated by this conditionality. Giving transfers towomen can result in a higher share of the moneybeing directed towards children – especially girls –than may be the case when men receive thetransfers (Kabeer, 2005).Half of beneficiaryhouseholds inEthiopia keepchildren in schoollonger as a resultof the ProductiveSafety NetProgramme207