Anti-poverty transfers and school attendance: Panama'sRed de Oportunidades

Purpose - The purpose of this paper seeks to gauge the impact of the Red de Oportunidades programme on the school attendance of children from households that participate in the programme. Design/methodology/approach - In order to measure the impact of the programme, the authors apply propensity score matching, a quasi-experimental technique that allows us to find an appropriate control group to compare with the treatment group. Findings - Results show that the programme does not always manage to bring into line school attendance of children from families involved in the programme with that of children from families who are not. Nevertheless, differences are still evident in terms of age, gender and geographical area. Practical implications - Conditional cash transfer programmes should be designed carefully, taking into account a great variety of factors such as geographical characteristics, educational resources and infrastructure, not only to replicate programmes that have proved to be effective in other countries. In this sense, it seems that the impact of cash transfers on primary school attendance can be wholly attributed to the programme, implying that it is better to allocate more resources to groups in terms of age and gender where education is still not universal. Originality/value - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time the impact of conditional cash transfers on school attendance has been examined in a country that still displays major geographical differences in terms of poverty, namely, Panama. The Red de Oportunidades programme has barely been studied.