Moving Beyond Conditional Cash Transfers in the Dominican Republic

Last registered on October 06, 2014
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Moving Beyond Conditional Cash Transfers in the Dominican Republic
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000082
Initial registration date
October 06, 2014

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
October 06, 2014, 2:08 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country
Dominican Republic
Region
Latin America & Caribbean

Primary Investigator

Name
Dean Karlan
Affiliation
Northwestern University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Greg Fischer
PI Affiliation
London School of Economics
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PI Name
Xavier Gine
PI Affiliation
The World Bank
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2013-02-19
End date
2015-12-01
Keywords
Finance & Microfinance, Labor
Additional Keywords
Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs), Financial Literacy, Graduation, Entrepreneurship, Employment
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
“Moving Beyond Conditional Cash Transfers in the Dominican Republic” is an impact evaluation of a pilot program designed to train beneficiaries of Progresando con Solidaridad (ProSoli), the Dominican Republic’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, in the areas of financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and job skills. This program aims to increase beneficiaries’ basic financial knowledge and ability to access formal financial services through training modules including Budgeting, Savings, and Credit. Additionally, this program aims to train beneficiaries in both hard and soft employment-seeking skills (Job Skills module) or starting and maintaining micro businesses (Entrepreneurship module). The evaluation compares the impact of training groups led by peer or professional facilitators in their ability to increase the beneficiaries’ financial literacy, as well as the efficiency of the Job Skills and Entrepreneurship modules as labor market interventions. In particular, we are seeking to test whether there are heterogeneous returns for the two programs based on their demand for such training as determined in the baseline survey. Ultimately, the project is designed to advise the Dominican government as it develops a graduation strategy for the program’s beneficiaries.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Fischer, Greg, Xavier Gine and Dean Karlan. 2014. "Moving Beyond Conditional Cash Transfers in the Dominican Republic." AEA RCT Registry. October 06. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.82-1.0
Former Citation
Fischer, Greg, Xavier Gine and Dean Karlan. 2014. "Moving Beyond Conditional Cash Transfers in the Dominican Republic." AEA RCT Registry. October 06. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/82/history/2824
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
All beneficiaries selected for treatment (2,176 heads of household) will receive a package of basic financial literacy training modules: Budgeting, Savings, and Credit. Half of the treatment groups will receive an additional Entrepreneurship module, and the other half a Job Skills module. Across these groups, half will receive training from a peer facilitator, a community organizer for the PS program, and half will receive training from a professional facilitator.
The unit of randomization for the treatments and sub-treatments will be training groups. One additional treatment level will also be assigned at the individual level, record-keeping notebooks for half of the Entrepreneurship beneficiaries.
The entire training course will be four, 2 hour sessions, one session per module, held one day a week for four consecutive weeks.
Intervention Start Date
2014-10-01
Intervention End Date
2014-12-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The outcomes we plan to study are changes in the beneficiaries’ knowledge in financial skills, business acumen and employee skills as an intermediate indicator that may cause a behavioral change, measured by the rate of new business opened, the probability of finding formal employment, formal savings accounts or credit lines opened, the amount in formal savings and loans, and the regularity of keeping a written budget. In addition, we will explore changes in household welfare such as consumption and purchase of durables.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
This study targets beneficiaries of the Progresando con Solidaridad program in the DR. Two hundred and forty nucleos (groups of beneficiaries organized by neighborhoods in the city) are randomly assigned to a treatment or control group using Stata. Of the 160 nucleos in the treatment group, half (80) are randomly assigned to receive the financial literacy training from professional trainers, while the other half will receive the same training from their peers. Within each professional vs. peer treatment group, nucleos are randomly assigned to receive an additional training session on entrepreneurship (launching and maintaining a successful business) or job skills (finding, acquiring, and maintaining employment). Finally, within the entrepreneurship treatment group, nucleos are randomly assigned to receive notebooks that can be used to maintain business budgets.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization will be done in the office using Stata. The initial randomized sample selection was done with DR government administrative data, and treatment selection was done using baseline data.
Randomization Unit
The randomization unit is the nucleo (administrative groups created by the CCT program) in the initial sample selection, as well as for treatment selection. There is also an individual level treatment, business notebooks.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
240 clusters of individual beneficiaries from neighboring nucleos
Sample size: planned number of observations
3,280 beneficiaries
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
160 treatment groups, 120 control groups
80 Financial literacy + Entrepreneurship training
80 Financial literacy + Job Skills training
80 of total treatment groups receiving peer training
80 of total treatment groups receiving professional training
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Yale University Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2013-02-20
IRB Approval Number
1302011424
IRB Name
Innovations for Poverty Action IRB - USA
IRB Approval Date
2013-01-11
IRB Approval Number
13January-003
Analysis Plan

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