The impact of educational, social, and labor support for parents and children on wellbeing, employment, and schooling outcomes: A pilot study with Save the Children in Spain

Last registered on January 23, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The impact of educational, social, and labor support for parents and children on wellbeing, employment, and schooling outcomes: A pilot study with Save the Children in Spain
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0010685
Initial registration date
January 17, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 23, 2023, 7:48 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Spain
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Veronica Gonzales Stuva
Affiliation
ESADE Business School
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Pedro Rey Biel
PI Affiliation
ESADE Business School
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Teresa Molina-Millán
PI Affiliation
University of Alicante
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2022-09-01
End date
2024-04-30
Keywords
Education, Labor, Welfare
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
In spite of the emergence of minimum income schemes in some high-income countries, such as the Ingreso Mínimo Vital (IMV) in Spain, there is not enough evidence to proof that these transfers alone can promote social inclusion amongst potential beneficiaries. In these contexts, it is common to find non-governmental organizations (NGOs) providing packages of several social services for low-income households, including programs around educational, labor, and social support, which aim to enhance the effectiveness of underlying government income schemes. We are currently partnering with Save the Children-Spain (STC) and the Spanish Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations (MISSM) to run a randomized evaluation of STC’s labor, education, and social interventions targeting families with school-age children that are socially excluded or at risk of social exclusion . Families will be randomly assigned to receive either the standard STC ‘social support’ package, or to receive ‘social support’ plus a combination of labor and educational support interventions. Our primary outcomes will include measures of subjective wellbeing and income, parents’ labor insertion, and educational achievement and attitudes amongst their children. At the end of the experiment, we expect to proof that a comprehensive social program that incorporates labor and educational components can be more effective on improving the well-being of children and adolescents of vulnerable families than other programs that only provide social support.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Gonzales Stuva, Veronica, Teresa Molina-Millán and Pedro Rey Biel. 2023. "The impact of educational, social, and labor support for parents and children on wellbeing, employment, and schooling outcomes: A pilot study with Save the Children in Spain." AEA RCT Registry. January 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10685-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

Partner

Name
Save the Children-Spain
Type
ngo
URL
https://www.savethechildren.es/donde/espana
Name
Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones
Type
government
URL
https://www.inclusion.gob.es/web/guest/home
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Save the Children (STC) is interested in learning whether a more holistic approach that includes a suite of social, labor-related, and educational services for vulnerable households with minor children under their care works better than a leaner approach composed only by parental and social support.
Intervention Start Date
2022-09-01
Intervention End Date
2023-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The primary outcomes are related to subjective measures of parent's wellbeing and empowerment, household income, hours worked, insertion to the labor market, job satisfaction, and children's schooling attitudes and outcomes.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
See Pre-Analysis Plan for a detailed explanation on how the outcomes will be measured.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
The secondary outcomes are related to the take-up of social benefits, easier access to sustainable and quality employment opportunities, and improvement on the probability of accessing sustainable and good quality employment opportunities.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
See Pre-Analysis Plan for a detailed explanation on how the outcomes will be measured.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The trial follows a four-arm parallel design where the interventions for social, educational and labor support have been grouped as follows: (i) a non-pure control group where families receive the social support intervention; (ii) a group where families receive the social support interventions and children under 18 receive the educational interventions; (iii) a group where families receive the social support intervention and parents receive the labor support interventions; and (iv) families receive social, educational and labor support.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
The randomization procedure has been conducted by the Spanish Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations using the software SAS. It follows a stratified randomization designed using the variables of geographic location, whether the family received a minimum income wage scheme, employment status of the adults and the family composition.
Randomization Unit
Families.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
The treatment is not clustered.
Sample size: planned number of observations
792 families interested in participating in the program. Each family is roughly estimated to have an average of 4 family members, with total number of participants of 3,065 individuals.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
The study has 4 treatment groups with 220 families assigned to the non-pure control group, 192 families assigned to the social support + education group, 190 families assigned to the social + labor support group, and 190 families assigned to the social + educational + labor support group.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The statistical software Stata has been used to estimate the statistical power. The calculations assume a set sample size of 792 households evenly divided into four treatment groups – that is 198 households per treatment group. No level of stratification has been considered in the sample and the ratio between the samples of each group is assumed to be 1. This also means that the program will be able to follow up with all respondents from baseline until the last survey. This considers that data will be collected once before the randomization of households and there will be two follow-up measurements. Two impact indicators have been selected for the analysis: (i) the average monthly income in the household, and (ii) percentage of adults employed in the household. The means and standard deviations for each of these indicators were calculated using the Encuesta de Condiciones de Vida for the year 2021. Finally, the calculations assume the intervention will have an impact of 10%, with a significance level of 95%, and the correlation between baseline and follow-ups and between follow up measurements is of 0.85 for the indicator of average monthly income and 0.83 for the indicator of percentage of adults employed. Based on the assumptions, we can conclude that the trial will have a power of approximately 72%, in the case of average monthly income, and a power of 69% for the indicator of percentage of adults employed in a household.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Comité Ético vinculado a los itinerarios de inclusión social
IRB Approval Date
2022-11-04
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

PAP Save the Children Spain

MD5: 84e344cfa9e28e35df72b28bd956a1d5

SHA1: c6774a38b603587dcff13a751d321757c1e762ae

Uploaded At: January 17, 2023