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As of 2007, 29 developing countries had some type of conditional cash transfer program in place, with many others planning or piloting one. However, the evidence base needed by a government to decide how to design a new conditional cash transfer program is severely limited in a number of critical dimensions. This paper presents one-year schooling impacts from a conditional cash transfer experiment among teenage girls and young women in Malawi, which was designed to address these shortcomings: conditionality status, size of separate transfers to the schoolgirl and the parent, and village-level saturation of treatment were all independently randomized. The authors find that the program had large impacts on school attendance: the re-enrollment rate among those who had already dropped out of school before the start of the program increased by two and a half times and the dropout rate among those in school at baseline decreased from 11 to 6 percent. These impacts were, on average, similar in the conditional and the unconditional treatment arms. Although most schooling outcomes examined here were unresponsive to variation in the size of the transfer to the parents, higher transfers given directly to the schoolgirls were associated with significantly improved school attendance and progress - but only if the transfers were conditional on school attendance. There were no spillover effects within treatment communities after the first year of program implementation. Policymakers looking to design cost-effective cash transfer programs targeted toward young women should note the relative insensitivity of these short-term program impacts with respect to conditionality and total transfer size.

Dropout from school --- Dropout rate --- Education --- Education for All --- Enrollment rate --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Literacy --- Low educational attainment --- Lower levels of education --- Number of dropouts --- Population Policies --- Poverty Monitoring and Analysis --- Primary Education --- Primary level --- Reading --- Rural Education --- School attendance --- School children --- School dropouts --- School enrollment --- School fees --- School girls --- School year --- Schooling --- Schools --- Secondary school --- Tertiary Education

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Are the large enrollment effects of conditional cash transfer programs a result of the conditions or simply the cash? This paper presents the first experimental evidence on the effectiveness of conditionality in cash transfer programs for schooling. Using data from an intervention in Malawi that featured randomized conditional and unconditional treatment arms, the authors find that the program reduced the dropout rate by more than 40 percent and substantially increased regular school attendance among the target population of adolescent girls. However, they do not detect a higher impact in the conditional treatment group. This finding contrasts with previous non-experimental studies of conditional cash transfer programs, which found negligible "income" effects and strong "price" effects on schooling. The authors argue that their findings are consistent with the very low level of incomes and the high prevalence of teen marriage in the region. The results indicate that relatively small, unconditional cash transfers can be cost-effective in boosting school enrollment among adolescent girls in similar settings.

Adolescent girls --- Adolescent Health --- Dropout from school --- Dropout rate --- Dropout rates --- Education --- Education For All --- Enrollment rates --- Health --- Learning --- Low educational attainment --- Net enrollment --- Nutrition and Population --- Population Policies --- Primary Education --- Primary school --- Regular school attendance --- Rural Education --- School children --- School dropout --- School enrollment --- School fees --- School year --- Schooling --- Schools --- Secondary school --- Secondary schools --- Tertiary Education

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This paper aims to identify the major drop-out and push-out factors that lead to school abandonment in an urban surrounding-the shantytowns of Fortaleza, Northeast Brazil. The authors use an extensive survey addressing risk factors faced by the population in these neighborhoods, which cover both in-school and out-of-school youth of both genders. They focus on the role of early parenthood, child labor, and poverty in pushing teenagers out of school. The potential endogeneity of some of the determinants is dealt with in the empirical analysis. The authors take advantage of the rich set of variables available and apply an instrumental variables approach. Early parenthood is instrumented with the age declared by the youngsters as the ideal age to start having sexual relationships. Work is instrumented using the declared reservation wage (minimum salary acceptable to work). Results indicate that early parenthood has a strong impact of driving teenagers out of school. Extreme poverty is another factor lowering school attendance, as children who have suffered hunger at some point in their lives are less likely to attend school. In this particular urban context, working does not necessarily have a detrimental effect on school attendance, which could be linked to the fact that dropping out of school leads most often to inactivity and not to work.

Adolescent Health --- Birth Rates --- Children and Youth --- Completion Rates --- Disability --- Education --- Education for All --- Elementary Education --- Enrollment Rates --- First Grade --- Grade Repetition --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- High School --- High School Diploma --- Low Educational Attainment --- Population Policies --- Primary Education --- Primary Education System --- School --- School Attendance --- School Day --- School Drop --- School Leavers --- School Year --- Schooling --- Social Protections and Labor --- Street Children --- Tertiary Education --- Universal Enrollment --- Urban Development --- Youth and Government