Education for the Poor

CERGE-EI Working Paper Series No. 542

33 Pages Posted: 17 May 2015

See all articles by Zurab Abramishvili

Zurab Abramishvili

Charles University in Prague - CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Lasha Lanchava

Charles University in Prague - CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Date Written: May 1, 2015

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact on university enrollment of an unconditional cash transfer in Georgia, designed to help households living below the subsistence level. The program, introduced in 2005, selects recipients based upon a quantitative poverty threshold, which gives us the ability to implement a regression discontinuity design. We use data on program recipients from the Social Service Agency of Georgia (SSA) and on university admissions from the National Examination Center (NAEC) to create a single dataset and compare applicants who are above and below the threshold, while controlling for the main effect of the assignment variable itself. This paper is the first rigorous evaluation of this particular program. We find that being a program recipient significantly increases a student’s likelihood of university enrollment, by 6.3%. We also find a gender specific impact on enrollment. The impact is stronger for males; being a male child of a beneficiary family results in a 13.3% greater chance of university enrollment.

Keywords: unconditional cash transfer, university enrollment, gender

JEL Classification: O15, I23, D13, J16

Suggested Citation

Abramishvili, Zurab and Lanchava, Lasha, Education for the Poor (May 1, 2015). CERGE-EI Working Paper Series No. 542, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2606784 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2606784

Zurab Abramishvili

Charles University in Prague - CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences ( email )

Politickych veznu 7
Prague, 111 21
Czech Republic

Lasha Lanchava (Contact Author)

Charles University in Prague - CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences ( email )

Politickych veznu 7
Prague, 111 21
Czech Republic

HOME PAGE: http://www.cerge-ei.cz

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