Cash Transfers Improve Economic Conditions and Reduce Maternal Stress in Rural Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

We report midline impacts of a community-randomized cash transfer intervention to 1857 vulnerable mothers in 140 rural cocoa-farming communities of Côte d’Ivoire. Compared to mothers in the comparison group who participated in village savings and loan associations (VSLAs), treatment mothers participated in VSLAs and received 8 € each week for up to one year with no conditions attached (the midway point of a two-year program). We find small- to moderate-sized treatment effects on four of six indicators of economic well-being (d = 0.23–0.75), as well as small reductions in maternal stress (d = −0.27). We find no statistically detectable impacts on educational engagement, educational aspirations, or educational expectations for children. Results suggest that cash transfer programs in rural West African communities can improve economic well-being and reduce maternal stress. Implications for children and families and for future cash transfer evaluations are discussed.

Appendix

Appendix A: Construction of Multi-dimensional Poverty Index

We constructed multidimensional poverty measures based on a dual-cutoff approach. First, in each dimension we defined deprivation as a shortfall from a certain cutoff point. Second, at the aggregated level, we defined poverty as a shortfall of the sum of deprivations from a certain cutoff point, as also defined in the MPI (Alkire & Foster, 2011). Specifically, we considered three poverty dimensions: Health, Education, and Standard of Living. We assigned an equal weight to each dimension. Thus, with three indicators under the health dimensions, each indicator is assigned a weight of 1/9, two indicators under the education dimension are assigned a weight of 1/6, while each of the 6 indicators under the standard of living dimension receives a weight of 1/18.

For the MPI Health dimension, three indicators were defined and assigned a 1/9 weight each: self-reported health (deprived if self-reported health is greater than 3 on a scale of 1–5 with 1 = excellent), child mortality (deprived if the household has a child born alive but died any time later), and household food consumption (deprived if number of meals consumed per day in the last week is less than three per day).

Regarding the MPI Education dimension, two indicators were defined with 1/6 weight each: parent education (deprived if the parent has never been to school), and child education (deprived if at least one child in the household aged 6–16 years does not currently go to school).

Finally, the MPI Standard of Living dimension consists of six indicators of 1/18 weight each. (1) Electricity—deprived if no access, (2) Sanitation—deprived if sanitation facility is not improved, or if it is improved but shared with other households, (3) Flooring—deprived if dirt/sand/dung flooring, (4) Water access—deprived if safe drinking water is 45 min away, (5) Cooking fuel—deprived in household used wood/charcoal/dung as fuel, and (6) Assets—deprived if the household does not own more than one of the following: iron, mobile phone, working fan, working bed, radio, TV, and motorbike or moped.

A household qualifies as multidimensionally poor if the MPI score >0.33, and can be categorized as severely poor if the MPI score >0.55.The deprivation score per household is calculated by taking the weighted sum of number of deprivations and thus the score for each household lies between 0 and 1, where the score increases as the number of household deprivations increases until the maximum of 1 is reached when a household is deprived in all indicators.

Tables 3–5

Table 3 Community-level intra-cluster correlations for dependent variables

Table 4 Impact variation by cohort, female-head household status and mother’s education

Table 5 Impact variation by child age and sex