Journal Article
Cash Transfers and Gender Differentials in Child Schooling and Labor

Family and child allowances constitute about 16% of total spending on cash transfers (CTs) worldwide. These programs often focus on increasing investments in children's human capital, particularly in nutrition and schooling, with the goal of reducing the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Other old‐age social pension programs and poverty‐targeted CTs have similarly targeted human capital investment objectives. To this end, the impacts of CTs on child welfare outcomes have been widely studied, showing overall positive results on schooling and in some cases a reduction in child labor.

The bulk of such evidence on both conditional and unconditional CTs shows that they have substantial impacts on child enrollment and attendance, particularly in secondary schooling, where attendance tends to be lower in poor households.