ERIC Number: ED672608
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Feb
Pages: N/A
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Rolling Back Progresa: School and Work after the End of a Landmark Anti-Poverty Program. Working Paper 33527
Fernanda Marquez-Padilla; Susan W. Parker; Tom S. Vogl
National Bureau of Economic Research
Mexico's pioneering conditional cash transfer program Progresa, later renamed Prospera, operated over two decades in a shifting policy landscape. We exploit the program's sudden and unexpected rollback to estimate whether, two decades after rollout studies documented its initial impacts on schooling and labor, the program still raised enrollment and reduced work in youth. Comparing areas with high and low program penetration before and after rollback, we find that rollback immediately reduced school enrollment, especially in boys of high school age. Effects on enrollment were larger at rollback than they were at rollout, albeit shifted from middle school ages to high school ages. Rising work mirrored falling enrollment in boys of high school age. Our results suggest the program had successfully adapted to the rise of high school, but Mexico's poor were unable to protect their children from its unexpected demise. [Additional funding provided by Maryland Population Research Center. The paper was presented at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, University of California San Diego, CIDE, Universidad Iberoamericana, University of Maryland, University of Virginia, International Conference for Development Economics 2024 at Aix en Provence, 2024 NBER Summer Institute, and the Georgetown Americas Institute.]
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Enrollment, Males, High School Students, Poverty, Middle School Students, Low Income Students, Programs, Change
National Bureau of Economic Research. 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-5398. Tel: 617-588-0343; Web site: http://www.nber.org
Publication Type: Reports - Research; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: High Schools; Secondary Education; Junior High Schools; Middle Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (DHHS/NIH)
Authoring Institution: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Identifiers - Location: Mexico
Grant or Contract Numbers: R21HD107407
Author Affiliations: N/A