IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v28y2014i2p282-310..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Children's Health Opportunities and Project Evaluation: Mexico's Oportunidades Program

Author

Listed:
  • Dirk Van de gaer
  • Joost Vandenbossche
  • José Luis Figueroa

Abstract

We propose a methodology to evaluate social projects from the perspective of children's opportunities on the basis of the effects of these projects on the distribution of outcomes. We condition our evaluation on characteristics for which individuals are not responsible; in this case, we use parental education level and indigenous background. The methodology is applied to evaluate the effects on children's health opportunities of Mexico's Oportunidades program, one of the largest conditional cash transfer programs for poor households in the world. The evidence from this program shows that gains in health opportunities for children from indigenous backgrounds are substantial and are situated in crucial parts of the distribution, whereas gains for children from nonindigenous backgrounds are more limited.

Suggested Citation

  • Dirk Van de gaer & Joost Vandenbossche & José Luis Figueroa, 2014. "Children's Health Opportunities and Project Evaluation: Mexico's Oportunidades Program," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 282-310.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:28:y:2014:i:2:p:282-310.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhs032
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harold Alderman & John Hoddinott & Bill Kinsey, 2006. "Long term consequences of early childhood malnutrition," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 450-474, July.
    2. Bossert W., 1996. "Redistribution mechanisms based on individual characteristics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 51-51, February.
    3. Saavedra-Chanduví, Jaime & Molinas, José R. & De Barros, Ricardo Paes & Ferreira, Francisco H. G., 2009. "Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 361.
    4. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2013. "Testing for Restricted Stochastic Dominance," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 84-125, January.
    5. Xavier Ramos & Dirk Van de gaer, 2012. "Empirical Approaches to Inequality of Opportunity: Principles, Measures, and Evidence," Working Papers wpdea1208, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1552 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    8. James J. Heckman & Jeffrey Smith & Nancy Clements, 1997. "Making The Most Out Of Programme Evaluations and Social Experiments: Accounting For Heterogeneity in Programme Impacts," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(4), pages 487-535.
    9. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2007. "From the Cradle to the Labor Market? The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 409-439.
    10. Wen‐Hao Chen & Jean‐Yves Duclos, 2011. "Testing for poverty dominance: an application to Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(3), pages 781-803, August.
    11. Duranton, Gilles & Martin, Philippe & Mayer, Thierry & Mayneris, Florian, 2010. "The Economics of Clusters: Lessons from the French Experience," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199592203.
    12. François Bourguignon & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Marta Menéndez, 2007. "Inequality Of Opportunity In Brazil," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(4), pages 585-618, December.
    13. Ricardo Paes de Barros & Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Jose R. Molinas Vega & Jaime Saavedra Chanduvi, 2009. "Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 2580, September.
    14. Fleurbaey,Marc & Maniquet,François, 2011. "A Theory of Fairness and Social Welfare," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521887427, September.
    15. Donal O'Neill & Olive Sweetman & Dirk van de gaer, 1999. "Equality of Opportunity and Kernel Density Estimation: An Application to Intergenerational Mobility," Economics Department Working Paper Series n950999, Department of Economics, National University of Ireland - Maynooth.
    16. Parker, Susan W. & Rubalcava, Luis & Teruel, Graciela, 2008. "Evaluating Conditional Schooling and Health Programs," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 62, pages 3963-4035, Elsevier.
    17. Anne Case & Christina Paxson, 2008. "Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(3), pages 499-532, June.
    18. Cawley, John & Spiess, C. Katharina, 2008. "Obesity and skill attainment in early childhood," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 388-397, December.
    19. Vito Peragine & Laura Serlenga, 2008. "Higher education and equality of opportunity in Italy," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality and Opportunity: Papers from the Second ECINEQ Society Meeting, pages 67-97, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    20. Lefranc, Arnaud & Pistolesi, Nicolas & Trannoy, Alain, 2009. "Equality of opportunity and luck: Definitions and testable conditions, with an application to income in France," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1189-1207, December.
    21. Backstrand, Jeffrey R. & Allen, Lindsay H. & Pelto, Gretel H. & Chávez, Adolfo, 1997. "Examining the gender gap in nutrition: An example from rural Mexico," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(11), pages 1751-1759, June.
    22. Arnaud Lefranc & Nicolas Pistolesi & Alain Trannoy, 2008. "Inequality Of Opportunities Vs. Inequality Of Outcomes: Are Western Societies All Alike?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(4), pages 513-546, December.
    23. Paul Gertler, 2004. "Do Conditional Cash Transfers Improve Child Health? Evidence from PROGRESA's Control Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 336-341, May.
    24. Jere R. Behrman & Susan W. Parker & Petra E. Todd, 2009. "Schooling Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers on Young Children: Evidence from Mexico," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(3), pages 439-477, April.
    25. Aslam, Monazza & Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi, 2012. "Parental Education and Child Health—Understanding the Pathways of Impact in Pakistan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 2014-2032.
    26. Juan Jose Diaz & Sudhanshu Handa, 2006. "An Assessment of Propensity Score Matching as a Nonexperimental Impact Estimator: Evidence from Mexico’s PROGRESA Program," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(2).
    27. Gaertner,Wulf & Schokkaert,Erik, 2011. "Empirical Social Choice," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107013940, October.
    28. Paul Schultz, T., 2004. "School subsidies for the poor: evaluating the Mexican Progresa poverty program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 199-250, June.
    29. Jere R. Behrman & John Hoddinott, 2005. "Programme Evaluation with Unobserved Heterogeneity and Selective Implementation: The Mexican PROGRESA Impact on Child Nutrition," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 67(4), pages 547-569, August.
    30. Russell Davidson, 2009. "Testing for Restricted Stochastic Dominance: Some Further Results," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 1(1), pages 34-59, September.
    31. Pedro Rosa Dias, 2009. "Inequality of opportunity in health: evidence from a UK cohort study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(9), pages 1057-1074, September.
    32. Alain Trannoy & Sandy Tubeuf & Florence Jusot & Marion Devaux, 2010. "Inequality of opportunities in health in France: a first pass," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 921-938, August.
    33. Paolo Verme, 2010. "Stochastic Dominance, Poverty and the Treatment Effect Curve," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(1), pages 365-373.
    34. Ariel Fiszbein & Norbert Schady & Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Margaret Grosh & Niall Keleher & Pedro Olinto & Emmanuel Skoufias, 2009. "Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2597.
    35. repec:idb:brikps:60098 is not listed on IDEAS
    36. John Cawley, 2004. "The Impact of Obesity on Wages," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2).
    37. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux, 2011. "The Measurement Of Inequality Of Opportunity: Theory And An Application To Latin America," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 57(4), pages 622-657, December.
    38. Jere R. Behrman & Susan W. Parker & Petra E. Todd, 2011. "Do Conditional Cash Transfers for Schooling Generate Lasting Benefits?: A Five-Year Followup of PROGRESA/Oportunidades," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 46(1), pages 93-122.
    39. Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux, 2011. "The Measurement of Inequality of Inequality of Opportunity: Theory and an Application to Latin America," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00754503, HAL.
    40. Sonalde Desai & Soumya Alva, 1998. "Maternal education and child health: Is there a strong causal relationship?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 35(1), pages 71-81, February.
    41. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:30:y:2010:i:1:p:365-373 is not listed on IDEAS
    42. Naschold, Felix & Barrett, Christopher B., 2010. "A stochastic dominance approach to program evaluation with an application to child nutritional status in arid and semi-arid Kenya," 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado 62013, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    43. Behrman, Jere R & Sengupta, Piyali & Todd, Petra, 2005. "Progressing through PROGRESA: An Impact Assessment of a School Subsidy Experiment in Rural Mexico," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(1), pages 237-275, October.
    44. Andreas Schick & Richard H. Steckel, 2010. "Height as a Proxy for Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Ability," NBER Working Papers 16570, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    45. Aslam, Monazza & Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi, 2012. "Parental Education and Child Health—Understanding the Pathways of Impact in Pakistan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 2014-2032.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Jones & John Roemer & Pedro Rosa Dias, 2014. "Equalising opportunities in health through educational policy," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(3), pages 521-545, October.
    2. Felix Naschold & Christopher B. Barrett, 2020. "A stochastic dominance approach to program evaluation with an application to child nutritional status in Kenya," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(6), pages 871-886, November.
    3. Bauchet, Jonathan & Undurraga, Eduardo A. & Reyes-García, Victoria & Behrman, Jere R. & Godoy, Ricardo A., 2018. "Conditional cash transfers for primary education: Which children are left out?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 1-12.
    4. X. Ramos & D. Van De Gaer, 2012. "Empirical Approaches to Inequality of Opportunity: Principles, Measures, and Evidence," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 12/792, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    5. DECANCQ Koen & OLIVERA Javier & SCHOKKAERT Erik, 2018. "Program evaluation and ethnic differences: the Pension 65 program in Peru," LISER Working Paper Series 2018-21, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    6. Figueroa, José Luis, 2014. "Distributional effects of Oportunidades on early child development," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 42-49.
    7. Pinar, Mehmet & Stengos, Thanasis & Topaloglou, Nikolas, 2020. "On the construction of a feasible range of multidimensional poverty under benchmark weight uncertainty," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 281(2), pages 415-427.
    8. Paolo Brunori & Alain Trannoy & Caterina Francesca Guidi, 2021. "Ranking populations in terms of inequality of health opportunity: A flexible latent type approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 358-383, February.
    9. Mehmet Pinar & Thanasis Stengos & Nikolas Topaloglou, 2022. "Stochastic dominance spanning and augmenting the human development index with institutional quality," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 315(1), pages 341-369, August.
    10. Morabito, Christian & Van de gaer, Dirk & Figueroa, José Luis & Vandenbroeck, Michel, 2018. "Effects of high versus low-quality preschool education: A longitudinal study in Mauritius," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 126-137.
    11. Nagano, Hitoshi & Puppim de Oliveira, Jose A. & Barros, Allan Kardec & Costa Junior, Altair da Silva, 2020. "The ‘Heart Kuznets Curve’? Understanding the relations between economic development and cardiac conditions," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. X. Ramos & D. Van De Gaer, 2012. "Empirical Approaches to Inequality of Opportunity: Principles, Measures, and Evidence," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 12/792, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    2. Figueroa, José Luis, 2014. "Distributional effects of Oportunidades on early child development," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 42-49.
    3. John E. Roemer & Alain Trannoy, 2016. "Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Measurement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1288-1332, December.
    4. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Vito Peragine, 2015. "Equality of opportunity: Theory and evidence," Working Papers 359, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    5. Marc Fleurbaey & Vito Peragine, 2013. "Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Equality of Opportunity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(317), pages 118-130, January.
    6. Aizawa, Toshiaki, 2019. "Ex-ante Inequality of Opportunity in Child Malnutrition: New Evidence from Ten Developing Countries in Asia," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 144-161.
    7. Vito Peragine & Flaviana Palmisano & Paolo Brunori, 2014. "Economic Growth and Equality of Opportunity," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 247-281.
    8. Dirk Van de gaer & Xavier Ramos, 2020. "Measurement of inequality of opportunity based on counterfactuals," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(3), pages 595-627, October.
    9. Aitor Calo-Blanco & J. García-Pérez, 2014. "On the welfare loss caused by inequality of opportunity," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(2), pages 221-237, June.
    10. Paul Hufe & Andreas Peichl, 2020. "Beyond Equal Rights: Equality of Opportunity in Political Participation," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(3), pages 477-511, September.
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13753 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Florence Jusot & Sabine Mage & Marta Menendez, 2014. "Inequality of Opportunity in Health in Indonesia," Working Papers DT/2014/06, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    13. Ana Suárez Álvarez & Ana Jesús López Menéndez, 2018. "Assessing Changes Over Time in Inequality of Opportunity: The Case of Spain," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 989-1014, October.
    14. ANDREOLI Francesco & HAVNES Tarjei & LEFRANC Arnaud, 2014. "Equalization of opportunity: Definitions, implementable conditions and application to early-childhood policy evaluation," LISER Working Paper Series 2014-12, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    15. Francesco Andreoli & Arnaud Lefranc, 2013. "Equalization of opportunity: Definitions and implementable conditions," Working Papers 310, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    16. Ana Suárez Álvarez & Ana Jesús López Menéndez, 2016. "Inequality of opportunity and income inequality in Spain: An analysis over time," Working Papers 423, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    17. Paolo Li Donni & Juan Rodríguez & Pedro Rosa Dias, 2015. "Empirical definition of social types in the analysis of inequality of opportunity: a latent classes approach," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(3), pages 673-701, March.
    18. Luis Fernando Gamboa & Erika Londoño, 2015. "Assessing Educational Unfair Inequalities at a Regional Level in Colombia," Lecturas de Economía, Universidad de Antioquia, Departamento de Economía, issue 83, pages 97-133, Julio - D.
    19. Patrizia Luongo, 2015. "Inequality of Opportunity in Educational Achievements: Cross-country and Intertemporal Comparisons," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-043, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Vito Peragine & Federico Biagi, 2019. "Equality of opportunity: theory, measurement and policy implications," JRC Research Reports JRC118542, Joint Research Centre.
    21. Enza Simeone, 2023. "Inequality in health status during the COVID-19 in the UK: does the impact of the second lockdown policy matter?," Working Papers 661, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:28:y:2014:i:2:p:282-310.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.