Evaluation of the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Conditional Cash Transfer Program

Last registered on June 17, 2020

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Evaluation of the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Conditional Cash Transfer Program
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0002788
Initial registration date
March 19, 2018

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
March 19, 2018, 6:54 PM EDT

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

Last updated
June 17, 2020, 10:02 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Center for Global Development

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
World Bank
PI Affiliation
World Bank

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2009-04-01
End date
2021-06-30
Secondary IDs
Abstract
The impact evaluation of the Philippine cash transfer program seeks to answer the following question: What is the causal impact of the cash transfer program on the beneficiaries’ health, education, and poverty indicators of interest? This is the fundamental evaluation question relating to the effectiveness of the designed cash transfer program for the Philippines. The results are intended to help guide government decisions related to program sustainability and scale-up. A broad range of outcomes will be assessed in order to evaluate the impact across a variety of dimensions. The interaction between this demand-side intervention and supply-side conditions (i.e. the state of the education and health facilities) will also be studied. The impact evaluation will also seek to validate the quasi-experimental regression discontinuity method vis-à-vis the RCT approach. This evaluation is focused directly on the relatively short-run impacts of the implementation of 4Ps (i.e. 28 months after the beginning of program implementation in RD only areas and 18 months in RCT areas). Future rounds of evaluation analysis could focus on medium- to long-run impacts, as well as potentially integrate other types of policy reform (for example supply-side interventions) and study their interaction with conditional cash transfers.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Filmer, Deon, Jed Friedman and Eeshani Kandpal. 2020. "Evaluation of the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Conditional Cash Transfer Program." AEA RCT Registry. June 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2788-1.1
Former Citation
Filmer, Deon, Jed Friedman and Eeshani Kandpal. 2020. "Evaluation of the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Conditional Cash Transfer Program." AEA RCT Registry. June 17. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2788/history/70646
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The Pantawid program provides cash transfers to poor households, conditional upon investments in child education and health as well as use of maternal health services. Eligible poor households were identified by the survey conducted by the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) that used a proxy means test (PMT), which estimated per capita household income on the basis of observable and easily-provided information, including household size and physical dwelling conditions. Households with estimated per capita income below the poverty line were classified as poor. From this subset of poor households, Pantawid identified eligible households as being those with children 0-14 years of age and/or a pregnant woman at the time of the assessment. Poor and eligible households receive a combination of health grants and education grants every two months ranging from PhP 500 to PhP 1,400 (approximately 11 USD to 32 USD) per household per month depending on the number of eligible children in the household. The maximum monthly transfer of PhP 1,400 represents about 23 percent of beneficiaries’ household income. Besides family size, the exact transfer amount is also determined by the compliance behavior of the household with respect to the health and education grants.
The health grant aims to promote healthy practices, improve child nutrition, and increase health care utilization. Poor households with children 0-14 years old and/or pregnant women receive up to PhP 500 (about US$ 11) per household per month, conditional on fulfilling the following requirements: (i) all children under the age of five follow the Department of Health (DOH) protocol by visiting the health center or rural health unit regularly; (ii) pregnant women attend the health center or rural health unit according to protocol; (iii) all school-aged children (6-14 years old) comply with the de-worming protocol at schools; and (iv) for households with children 0-14 years old, the household grantee (mother) and/or spouse shall attend Family Development Sessions at least once a month.
A key difference between Pantawid and many other cash transfers is that in addition to growth monitoring through increased health service utilization, Family Development Sessions are expected to play a growth promoting role. Nutrition is a major topic covered in these sessions; parents are actively encouraged to increase children’s consumption of nutrient-rich foods, in particular dairy, and deemphasize the consumption of packaged foods. In addition, these sessions provide information on good parenting practices, such as exclusive breastfeeding and treatment seeking and home remedies for basic illnesses like diarrhea.
The education grant, of up to PhP 300 (US$ 6.50) per child per month aims to improve school attendance of children 6-14 years old living in poor households in selected areas. Households can only receive the grant for up to 10 months/year and for a maximum of three children in the household. Beneficiary households receive the education transfer for each child as long as they are enrolled in primary or secondary school and attend 85 percent of the school days every month.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2009-04-01
Intervention End Date
2011-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Infant and maternal morbidities
Child nutrition outcomes, including anthropometry.
Child education outcomes, including enrollment and attendance
Cognitive development
Motor development
Household consumption, including consumption of key child development commodities
Subjective household welfare
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
In anticipation of an impact evaluation study, a set of 8 municipalities in the pilot areas were selected to be study localities at the time of initial program implementation. These municipalities are in four provinces (Mountain Province, Occidental Mindoro, Negros Oriental and Lanao del Norte) that were purposefully selected to represent the country’s macro regions. Two municipalities in each of the four provinces were randomly selected. Half of the villages within each municipality were randomly assigned to participate immediately in the program, and the other half were to participate after a delay of approximately one year—in the end there are 65 “treatment” villages and 65 “control” villages. Data collected from these study localities form the basis for the RCT evaluation.

THE RCT SAMPLE
Control: The RCT study control group will be constituted by eligible households (and concomitant facilities) in barangays within the RCT study localities that have not yet received the 4Ps program.
Treatment: Eligible households (and concomitant facilities) in villages within the RCT localities that have received the 4Ps program will form the treatment group.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization in office
Randomization Unit
Village
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
130
Sample size: planned number of observations
30 households per randomization unit
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1950 households per arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
0.41 for household per capita expenditure, 0.21 for school participation of 6-14 year old children, 0.25 for health facility visits for 0-5 year old children.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Republic of the Philippines National Statistical Coordination Board
IRB Approval Date
2011-09-08
IRB Approval Number
PPI-083111-38

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials