Do Conditional Cash Transfers Lead to Better Secondary Schools?: Evidence from Jamaica's PATH

Date
Oct 2016
We explored the hypothesis that the Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH), Jamaica's conditional cash transfer program, contributes to breaking the inter-generational poverty cycle by placing its urban beneficiaries on a higher educational trajectory. Using a regression discontinuity design, we found that PATH urban male beneficiaries who sat the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) over the period 2010-2014 performed better on the test (scoring 16.03 points, or 3.6%, higher than non-beneficiaries); consequently, they were placed in better secondary schools (1.5 percentiles higher in a national school ranking based on placed students' GSAT scores). In contrast, we found no significant impact for urban girls.