中文摘要
有条件现金转移支付 (CCTs) 是一种流行的社会福利项目, 以家庭在子女方面的人力资本投资为条件向其发放款项。从瞄准角度看, 与无条件现金转移支付 (UCTs) 相比, CCTs 成本较高, 因为领取资格与对子女的正常投资挂钩, 从而将部分低收入家庭排除在外。然而, 我们认为, 以子女入学为条件相对于UCTs带来了一种尚未被发掘的瞄准收益: CCTs 将资金瞄准那些放弃了离散数额子女收入的家庭。我们证明, CCTs 瞄准收益相对于其瞄准成本的大小, 与入学家庭和未入学家庭之间的消费差异, 以及文献中已广为使用的两个弹性直接相关: UCT 的收入效应和 CCT 的价格效应。我们利用对年幼弟妹转移支付的变异来识别收入效应, 从而对墨西哥农村的大型 CCT 项目 Progresa 估计了这些弹性。在这一背景下, 我们发现瞄准收益与排除部分低收入家庭的成本在量级上相当; 这意味着, 仅基于瞄准的理由, Progresa 预算的 33% 应以 CCT 而非 UCT 的形式发放。
Abstract
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are a popular type of social welfare program that make payments to households conditional on human capital investments in children. From a targeting perspective, compared to unconditional cash transfers (UCTs), CCTs are costly because they exclude some low-income households as access is tied to normal investments in children. However, we argue that conditionalities on children’s school enrollment offer an unexplored targeting benefit over UCTs: CCTs target money to households who forgo a discrete amount of child income. We show that the size of the targeting benefit relative to the targeting cost of CCTs is directly related to the consumption differences between schooling and non-schooling households and two elasticities already popular in the literature: the income effect of a UCT and the price effect of a CCT. We estimate these elasticities for a large CCT program in rural Mexico, Progresa, using variation in transfers to younger siblings to identify income effects. In this setting, we find that the targeting benefit is a similar magnitude to the cost of excluding some low-income households; this implies that 33% of the Progresa budget should go to a CCT over a UCT based on targeting grounds alone.