Do Education and Health Conditions Matter in a Large Cash Transfer? Evidence from a Honduran Experiment

The article analyzes a new Honduran conditional cash transfer experiment (Bono 10,000) in which 150 poor villages (of 300) were treated. The per household transfer was much larger than an earlier experiment, but it yielded smaller short-run effects on school enrollment, child labor participation, and use of health services. One explanation is that Bono 10,000 did not apply conditions to all children: only one school-age child in participating households was subject to the education condition, and young children and mothers were only subject to the health conditions in the absence of school-age children. Consistent with this, we find a large enrollment increase (and offsetting decrease in labor participation) among households with one eligible child and smaller and insignificant effects on children in larger households. We only find significant effects on health service use among children and mothers in the absence of a school-age child (despite a smaller household transfer). The heterogeneity is not driven by variables correlated with the number of children such as household size, child age, birth order, or poverty.