In her hands: Long-term effects of designating mothers as beneficiaries of cash transfer programs

Last registered on January 22, 2026

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
In her hands: Long-term effects of designating mothers as beneficiaries of cash transfer programs
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0017610
Initial registration date
January 14, 2026

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 22, 2026, 6:25 AM EST

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Princeton University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Paris-Dauphine
PI Affiliation
Lund University
PI Affiliation
Princeton University
PI Affiliation
UM6P

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2008-08-01
End date
2026-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
Between 2008 and 2012, Benhassine et al. (2015) ran a clustered RCT to estimate the impact of Tayssir, a pilot government program that provided cash transfers to poor households with school-age children, on educational outcomes. The program was randomized at the school-sector level. The RCT included a control group (no transfers) and a treatment group with cash transfers ‘labeled’ for education, and a treat-
ment group conditional on children being attending schools regularly. The two treatment arms were each further divided into two subgroups: in one subgroup of school-sectors, cash transfers were made to fathers, and in the other, transfers were made to mothers. Based on the finding that cash transfers improved educational outcomes, the government of Morocco scaled up the Tayssir program to the whole country in 2013. Interestingly, in the villages that were in the original treatment group, the government maintained the fathers vs. mothers allocation until the Tayssir program was abolished in 2023. Therefore, between 2008 and 2023 (15 years), women in villages in the original Mothers group received regular cash transfers conditional on having school-age children attending school, while those in the original Fathers group did not. Given the initial randomization, this provides a unique opportunity to study the long-term impact of cash transfers to women rather than to men. Specifically, the objective of this project is to measure the effect of 15 years of exposure to women-as-cash-transfer-recipients (compared to 15 years of exposure to men-as-cash-transfer-recipients) on community-wide gender attitudes and norms, women’s empowerment, preferences for the design of social protection programs, educational outcomes for children, and intimate-partner violence.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Devoto, Florencia et al. 2026. "In her hands: Long-term effects of designating mothers as beneficiaries of cash transfer programs." AEA RCT Registry. January 22. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.17610-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Between 2008 and 2012, Benhassine et al. (AEJ Policy 2015) ran a clustered RCT to estimate the impact of Tayssir, a pilot government program that provided cash transfers to poor households with school-age children, on educational outcomes. The
program was randomized at the school-sector level. The RCT included a control group (no transfers) and a treatment group with cash transfers ‘labeled’ for education, and a treatment group conditional on children being attending schools regularly. The two treatment arms were each further divided into two subgroups: in one subgroup of school-sectors, cash transfers were made to fathers, and in the other, transfers were made to mothers.

Based on the finding that cash transfers improved educational outcomes, the government of Morocco scaled up the conditional version of the Tayssir program to the whole country in 2013. Interestingly, in the villages that were in the original treatment group, the government maintained the fathers vs. mothers allocation until the Tayssir program was abolished in 2023. Therefore, between 2008 and 2023 (15 years), women in villages in the original Mothers group received regular cash transfers conditional on having school-age children attending school, while those in the original Fathers group did not.

We want to test the following hypotheses about the treatment effects of having been assigned to the transfers-to-mothers group compared to the transfers-to-fathers group:
H1: Gender attitudes. Villagers in Treatment villages have more progressive gender attitudes on average. The magnitude of the effect may differ by gender.
H2. Women´s Empowerment. Higher women’s empowerment in treatment villages.
H3. Children Education: Higher level of education reached for children in treatment villages. The magnitude of the effect may differ by child gender.
H4. Violence against women. Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) could be higher or lower in treatment villages.
H5. Preferences for the design of social protection programs: Higher tolerance for women as beneficiaries of at least part of the cash transfer in treatment villages.
Intervention Start Date
2008-09-01
Intervention End Date
2023-07-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1. Gender attitudes
2. Women´s Empowerment
3. Children Education
4. Preferences for the Design of Social Protection Programs
5. IPV
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
1. Gender attitudes
We will report a social norm index that aggregates all subindices below. Also, we will report each subindex separately:
• Norms on women´s work and marriage subindex
• Norms on women´s education subindex
• Norms on the acceptability of IPV subindex
• Norms on women´s mobility
• Norms on household decision-making
We will report outcomes separately for men and women.

2. Women´s Empowerment
We will report an empowerment index that aggregates all subindices below. Also, we will
report each subindex separately:
• Mobility sub-index
• Reported decision-making sub-index
• Elicited decision-making sub-index
• Tayssir decision-making sub-index

3. Children Education
• Completed primary school (for children 13 years old or older)
• Completed collége (for children 16 years old or older)
• Completed lycée (for children 19 years old or older)
• Attending primary school (for children up to 12)
We will report outcomes separately for boys and girls.

4. Preferences for the design of social protection programs and views over potential tradeoffs
We will report answers to questions that capture support for women as the beneficiaries of cash transfers and perceived associated risks

5. IPV
We will report an IPV index that aggregates all subindices below. Additionally, we will report each subindex separately:
• Physical IPV subindex (ever experienced, experienced during Tayssir, experienced in past 12 months)
• Emotional IPV subindex (ever experienced, experienced during Tayssir, experienced in past 12 months)
As IPV victimization is a sensitive topic, there could be underreporting of its incidence. This can pose a special threat to estimating the causal impact of women being assigned as beneficiaries of Tayssir on IPV if its reporting changes by treatment status. For instance, if treatment impacts empowerment and this leads to higher reporting but not higher incidence, we could be wrongly concluding that the treatment leads to an increase in IPV.
This challenge has led researchers to adopt several different methods to measure IPV, such as list experiments and Audio Computer-Assisted Self-Interview. We piloted both alternative methods and concluded that they did not perform well in our context, where we interview illiterate people with low familiarity with managing a tablet. Therefore, we decided to adopt a different approach in order to increase the acceptability of reporting IPV to surveyors. We first ask respondents if they agree that if it only happens once, a woman should endure IPV for family stability. Our pilot indicates that a great majority of women agree with this sentence. After, we ask them if they have already endured IPV for family stability. By embedding the question within a culturally recognizable justification, it reduces the confrontational nature of directly asking about IPV victimization. To validate this method, we will report whether the acceptability of enduring IPV that happens once for family stability varies by treatment status. In addition, we will measure if there are any treatment effects on the probability of reporting IPV through a vignette.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
1. Mental Health and Well-being

2. Female Labor Force Participation

3. Daughters' Marriage and Labor Force Participation

4. Female Self-Efficacy
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
1. Mental Health and Well-being
We will report a mental health and well-being index that aggregates a mental health subindex
and a life satisfaction question. Also, we will report the mental health subindex and the life
satisfaction question subindex separately.
• Mental Health subindex
• Life Satisfaction
We will report outcomes separately for men and women.

2. Female Labor Force Participation
• Currently works outside the house
• Currently works in a paid job
• Ever worked in a paid job after marriage

3. Daughters' Marriage and Labor Force Participation
• Daughters' Marriage Subindex
• Daughters' Labor Force Participation Subindex
We will report outcomes for daughters (including adult daughters who have moved out of the village) of survey respondents. Information about their daughters outcomes will be collected from respondents.

4. Female Self-Efficacy
• Self-Efficacy Index

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Our experimental design consists of the random assignment of school-sectors to have mothers as beneficiaries of Tayssir´s cash transfer and school-sectors to have fathers as beneficiaries of Tayssir´s cash transfer.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done by the prior RCT (Benhassine et al., AEJ Policy 2015).
Randomization Unit
School-sector
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
260 clusters
Sample size: planned number of observations
around 8,000
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
130 school sectors formerly assigned to Tayssir-to-mothers, 130 school sectors formerly assigned to Tayssir-to-fathers
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
UM6P
IRB Approval Date
2025-12-17
IRB Approval Number
055-2025
IRB Name
Princeton IRB
IRB Approval Date
2024-06-04
IRB Approval Number
16963
IRB Name
University of Essex Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2025-11-04
IRB Approval Number
ETH2526-0210