Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting

Signs of development delays and malnutrition are widespread among young children in low-income settings. Social protection programs such as cash transfers are increasingly combined with behavioral change promotion or parenting interventions to impr...

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Main Authors:	Premand, Patrick, Barry, Oumar
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2020
Subjects:	EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT PARENTING BEHAVIORAL CHANGE COMMUNICATION CASH TRANSFERS SPILLOVER EFFECT FIELD EXPERIMENT MALNUTRITION COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/756191598464680389/Behavioral-Change-Promotion-Cash-Transfers-and-Early-Childhood-Development-Experimental-Evidence-from-a-Government-Program-in-a-Low-Income-Setting http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34385

id	okr-10986-34385
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-343852022-09-20T00:10:31Z Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting Premand, Patrick Barry, Oumar EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT PARENTING BEHAVIORAL CHANGE COMMUNICATION CASH TRANSFERS SPILLOVER EFFECT FIELD EXPERIMENT MALNUTRITION COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Signs of development delays and malnutrition are widespread among young children in low-income settings. Social protection programs such as cash transfers are increasingly combined with behavioral change promotion or parenting interventions to improve early childhood development. This paper disentangles the effects of behavioral change promotion from cash transfers to poor households through an experiment embedded in a government program in Niger. The study is also designed to identify within-community spillovers from the behavioral change intervention. The findings show that behavioral change promotion affects a range of practices related to nutrition, health, stimulation, and child protection. Local spillovers on parenting practices are also found. Moderate gains in children's socio-emotional development are observed, but there are no improvements in anthropometrics or cognitive development. Cash transfers alone do not alter parenting practices or improve early childhood development. Cash transfers improve welfare and food security at the household level, and the behavioral intervention induces intra-household reallocations toward children. 2020-08-27T14:47:03Z 2020-08-27T14:47:03Z 2020-08 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/756191598464680389/Behavioral-Change-Promotion-Cash-Transfers-and-Early-Childhood-Development-Experimental-Evidence-from-a-Government-Program-in-a-Low-Income-Setting http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34385 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9368 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Policy Research Working Paper Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Africa Nigeria
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT PARENTING BEHAVIORAL CHANGE COMMUNICATION CASH TRANSFERS SPILLOVER EFFECT FIELD EXPERIMENT MALNUTRITION COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
spellingShingle	EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT PARENTING BEHAVIORAL CHANGE COMMUNICATION CASH TRANSFERS SPILLOVER EFFECT FIELD EXPERIMENT MALNUTRITION COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Premand, Patrick Barry, Oumar Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting
geographic_facet	Africa Nigeria
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9368
description	Signs of development delays and malnutrition are widespread among young children in low-income settings. Social protection programs such as cash transfers are increasingly combined with behavioral change promotion or parenting interventions to improve early childhood development. This paper disentangles the effects of behavioral change promotion from cash transfers to poor households through an experiment embedded in a government program in Niger. The study is also designed to identify within-community spillovers from the behavioral change intervention. The findings show that behavioral change promotion affects a range of practices related to nutrition, health, stimulation, and child protection. Local spillovers on parenting practices are also found. Moderate gains in children's socio-emotional development are observed, but there are no improvements in anthropometrics or cognitive development. Cash transfers alone do not alter parenting practices or improve early childhood development. Cash transfers improve welfare and food security at the household level, and the behavioral intervention induces intra-household reallocations toward children.
format	Working Paper
author	Premand, Patrick Barry, Oumar
author_facet	Premand, Patrick Barry, Oumar
author_sort	Premand, Patrick
title	Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting
title_short	Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting
title_full	Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting
title_fullStr	Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting
title_full_unstemmed	Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting
title_sort	behavioral change promotion, cash transfers and early childhood development : experimental evidence from a government program in a low-income setting
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2020
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/756191598464680389/Behavioral-Change-Promotion-Cash-Transfers-and-Early-Childhood-Development-Experimental-Evidence-from-a-Government-Program-in-a-Low-Income-Setting http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34385
_version_	1764480790973906944

Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting

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