Preventing Excess Female School Drop Out in Mozambique: Conditional Transfers and the Respective Role of Parent and Child in Schooling Decisions

Last registered on February 29, 2016

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0001069

Initial registration date

February 29, 2016

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

February 29, 2016, 10:07 AM EST

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

Locations

Country

Mozambique

Region

Manica Province

Primary Investigator

Name

Damien de Walque

Affiliation

The World Bank

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Christine Valente

PI Affiliation

University of Bristol

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2015-12-07

End date

2017-06-30

Keywords

Education

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

In order to shed light on the respective role of parents and children in making schooling decisions, our experiment will assign primary schools in Mozambique’s Manica province randomly across four groups, comprising three treatment groups and one control group. In the three treatment arms, we will introduce attendance “report cards” for each girl in Grade 6 and Grade 7, the last two grades of primary school, with the aim to record and share weekly attendance information with parents. In two of these treatment arms, transfers conditional on regular attendance will also be paid either (i) to parents, in cash or (ii) to the girls, in money-equivalent tokens redeemable against a selected number of items such as clothes, shoes and school bags made available at the school by the research team. The choice of these items was based on qualitative evidence suggesting that they were both valued by girls in the relevant target group and likely to “stick” to the child recipient, contrary to a cash transfer. We reinforce the comparability of the transfers of “cash to parents” and “in kind to daughters” by matching the value of the tokens to that of the cash transfer, and by allowing parents receiving cash to purchase the same items as the girls receiving tokens in the other treatment arm.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

de Walque, Damien and Christine Valente. 2016. "Preventing Excess Female School Drop Out in Mozambique: Conditional Transfers and the Respective Role of Parent and Child in Schooling Decisions." AEA RCT Registry. February 29. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1069-1.1

Former Citation

Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We allocated each sampled school randomly to one of four experimental groups.

In Treatment arms A and B, we introduced a program of transfers conditional on regular school attendance. The verification of the condition triggering the transfers is based on an attendance report card filled in by the main teacher on a daily basis, and intended to be taken home by the pupils every weekend. These report cards are checked independently by the research team between one and three times per trimester during unannounced spot checks.

Treatment arm A - in this group we will give money-equivalent "tokens" to girls in Grades 6 and 7 who will then be able to use the tokens to buy a selected number of items such as: clothes (school uniform-type especially), shoes, school bag, smaller materials (pens, notebooks, etc...) made available by the research team at the school. The choice of items listed here is based on focus groups interviews with girls age 12-15 and their parents (interviewed separately) in areas excluded from the experimental sample. The qualitative evidence collected indeed suggests that these items meet two important criteria: (i) they were consistently cited when children (parents) were asked what gifts could incentivize them (their daughters) to attend school regularly and (ii) both parents and children seemed confident that a girl who was given these items would be able to keep them for herself, and would not be expected to share with anyone else, thus ensuring that this treatment incentivizes the girls themselves rather than their families (other than through the utility they may derive from this extra consumption by their daughters).

Treatment arm B - in this group we give money to the parents, and make the same items as in Treatment arm A available for optional purchase at the school.

Note that in the girls' treatment arm (A), the price in tokens will match the price in Meticais for each item to reinforce comparability with Treatment arm B. In addition, the amount of the cash transfer in arm B will match the value of the tokens in arm A.

Treatment arm C is an "information" treatment, in which we introduce the attendance report card system described above for girls in Grades 6 and 7 without any conditional transfers.

Treatment arm D is the control group.

Intervention Start Date

2016-02-08

Intervention End Date

2016-12-19

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Main outcomes: school attendance conditional on enrollment, unconditional attendance, and school enrollment.
Secondary outcomes: teacher absenteeism, score at ASER math test and RAVEN test, marital status, self-reported quality of monitoring of daughter's school attendance, and intra-household bargaining power.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Cluster randomization of 173 schools into 4 groups: 3 treatment groups and one control group.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization done in office by computer.

Randomization Unit

173 schools.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

173 schools.

Sample size: planned number of observations

Household survey sample: 3,460 girls (20 per cluster); Attendance spot checks sample: 15,800 pupils (about 91 girls per cluster, on average, based on 2014 data from the Ministry of Education).

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

44 schools in treatment group A (in-kind incentives to girls), 44 schools in treatment group B (money incentives to parents), 41 schools in treatment group C (information about attendance), 44 schools in control group D.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

the University of Bristol's School of Economics, Finance & Management Research Ethics Committee

IRB Approval Date

2015-03-14

IRB Approval Number

n.a.

Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?

Yes

Intervention Completion Date

December 31, 2016, 12:00 +00:00

Data Collection Complete

Yes

Data Collection Completion Date

March 09, 2019, 12:00 +00:00

Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)

173

Was attrition correlated with treatment status?

Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations

173 schools, 2,793 girls surveyed at endline

Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms

Control: 44 schools, 711 girls surveyed at endline Child Incentive treatment: 44 schools, 699 girls surveyed at endline Parent cash treatment: 44 schools, 715 girls surveyed at endline Information treatment: 41 schools, 668 girls surveyed at endline

Data Publication

Is public data available?

Yes

Public Data URL

https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/154261/version/V1/view

Program Files

Yes

Program Files URL

https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/154261/version/V1/view

Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials

Description

de Walque, Damien, and Christine Valente. “Incentivizing School Attendance in the Presence of Parent-Child Information Frictions.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 15, no. 3 (August 2023): 256–85. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20210202.

Citation

URL

https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20210202.