Intervention(s)
We aim at evaluating the impact of different forms of cash transfers - conditional vs. unconditional - to families below the poverty threshold and with, at least, one child aged 0-6. We exploit an established cash transfer service provided by the Compagnia di San Paolo-Ufficio Pio in one of the main Italian metropolitan areas, namely the Municipality of Turin. The effectiveness of cash transfers is measured in terms of a set of outcomes grouped in the following macro-areas: labor market related outcomes, children education related outcomes, health related outcomes, income related outcomes and social inclusion related outcomes. Each outcome, when applicable, will be measured for each of the household components.
One of the main advantages of our setting is that we are able to compare two different interventions using a very circumscribed - geographically speaking - sample selected in the same urban area. This way we can ensure that pre-treatment groups - control and treatment groups - are similar in almost all the characteristics - both observable (and testable) and unobservable (not testable) - and that also in the period during the treatment all the groups will be potentially hit by the same common shocks.
We split the entire population of applicants into three different groups. A control group, a first treatment group receiving an unconditional cash transfer and a second treatment group receiving a conditional cash transfer. The condition for the last group to receive the cash transfer is the attendance, after the receiving of the first fraction (around 30% of the total amount) of the transfer, to a series of courses aimed at fostering family-labor conciliation, individual labor market knowledge and opportunities, children education and human development related outcomes, financial literacy and the undertaking of healthy and non-risky behaviors.
The cash transfer amount ranges between euro 2500 and euro 3500 according to the number of children in the household. The amount of money received in form of cash transfer is particularly high if we consider that the household selected to participate in the programme reports income particularly low (the average annual ISEE - indicator for the economic situation of the household - is around euro 700).
After a period of 12 months since the entering in the programme, each of the household is interviewed in order to assess information about a set of outcomes potentially affected by the intervention. Each of the outcomes, when applicable, is measured for each member in the household.
The set of outcomes is the following:
-Labor market outcomes: Employment status, time in employment, unemployment status, time in unemployment, wage, weekly hours of work, job satisfaction, enrollment in professional courses, enrollment in course of the Italian language (question for foreigners only) etc.
-Children education outcomes: Childcare enrollment, school enrollment, scholastic performance, scholastic activities, non-scholastic activities, qualitative outcomes, child’s attitude, pro-social behavior etc.
-Health related outcomes: Weight, height, Body Mass Index (BMI), blood pressure, number of visits to the doctor in the last year, general health problems, food consumption, tobacco consumption, alcohol consumption etc.
-Income related outcomes: Household income, amount of taxes paid, arrears in utility bills, monthly house rent, household's properties, household's financial assets, use of internet, newspapers etc.
-Social inclusion: measure of social inclusion, feelings with respect to the rest of the community, blood donations, electoral preference, votes (if applicable), participation to activities etc.