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Conditional cash transfers (CCTs): improving lives through education in Jamaica?

Mon, April 15, 10:00 to 11:30am, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Atrium (Level 2), Waterfront D

Proposal

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have rapidly become a mainstream policy instrument used to redistribute income to poor households in developing countries around the world (Fiszbein, Schady, & Ferreira, 2009). Added income, in the form of cash transfers, reduces their vulnerability and risk by enhancing their livelihood security by providing them with adequate and sustainable access to income and resources to meet basic needs (for example, adequate access to food, water, health facilities, educational opportunities, and housing). Beyond more short-term vulnerability/risk reduction, CCT programs also offer the potential to improve the lives of their beneficiaries by contributing to human capital accumulation, anticipated to improve their employment and labour market outcomes in the long term (Fernald, Gertler, & Hidrobo, 2012).
The Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH) is one such CCT program that was established in Jamaica. PATH envisages that additional financial resources will increase school attendance and that increased school attendance will result in higher student performance (as measured by grades and/or test scores). In this way, the program intends to foster human capital development among its child beneficiaries in hopes that increased human capital will improve their future labour market and employment outcomes, and ultimately allow them to improve their financial conditions. PATH hopes that in so doing, the intergenerational cycle of poverty in Jamaica can be broken which would enable beneficiaries to lead better lives and also advance the overall prosperity of Jamaica.
However, evaluations of the PATH program indicated that beyond increased attendance, there was no evidence of increased school performance, as learning remained stagnant (Levy & Ohls, 2010). Global evidence surrounding CCT programs has also found little to no effects on learning (Fiszbein et al., 2009). The findings in Jamaica and the global evidence represent a missing link in the chain of expected causal effects of CCT programs in the development of greater human capital among the poor (Simões & Sabates, 2014).
Research as to the impact of CCT programs on educational outcomes to date has focused mostly on test scores, class grades, cognitive abilities, advancement to the next grade and other similar indicators. Consistent with the characterisation of human capital as being the procurement of knowledge and skills, similar findings among these programs around the world suggest the need to adopt a different focus.
Thus, this study conducted a broader investigation on the influence of the PATH program on beneficiaries, their experiences with education, and consequently, on their lives. It is relevant both to international education as well as to sustainability given its focus on education in the context of an international policy initiative which seeks to contribute both to social development through greater inclusion of its recipients in society, as well as to economic development through increased productivity.
Ultimately, it seeks to ascertain whether receiving assistance from a CCT program is potentially influencing other forms of capital, such as social, financial, cultural and identity capital, to name a few. Doing so might elucidate whether previous research has been too narrow in its focus and whether a broader conceptualisation of (human) capital might be better suited in understanding the influences of CCT programs on beneficiaries’.
The majority of the studies on the assessment of CCT programs have utilized quantitative methods. To meaningfully add to the literature, this study instead took an exploratory and inductive approach and employed qualitative methodology, and more specifically, phenomenology, so as to gain an in-depth understanding of participants’ experiences.
Utilising elements of the Capability Approach and the wider benefits of education literature as theoretical frameworks, this study intends to elucidate participants’ opportunities, choices and achievements resulting from their receipt of benefits from PATH, as well as their perceived benefits of an education. Whilst these frameworks have been used as a guide for the research questions posed, and for thought processes thus far, these frameworks have not yet been strongly applied per phenomenological principles which recommend attending wholly to what the participants have shared prior to applying theoretical underpinnings.
Recipients of PATH were interviewed in Jamaica using semi-structured interview protocols. Given that they were being asked to reconstruct their experiences and explore their meaning, the flexibility semi-structured interviews offered was deemed best suited as it allowed for adaptations to ensure proper attendance to the uniqueness of individual experiences.
Seidman's (2013) approach, intentionally open-ended and consisting of a three-part in-depth interviewing process to facilitate information gathering across time was the specific method utilised. It embodies “an emphasis on exploring the meaning of people’s experiences in the context of their lives,”(Seidman, 2013, p. 20) and is therefore in keeping with phenomenological principles.
To analyse the data, interpretative phenomenological analysis was utilised. A research approach committed to the examination of how people make sense of their major life experiences (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009) it complements Seidman’s approach and maintains the integrity of this study’s goal.
The in-depth semi-structured interviews allowed for deep engagement with participants and their experiences, and during data analysis, offered ample opportunities to reflect on the resulting themes that emerged therein. These have contributed to conclusions, more narrative in form, and which include the researcher’s analytic interpretation of what the participants have shared, supported by verbatim extracts from the participants. In essence, the conclusions represent a double hermeneutic: the researcher’s attempt to make sense of the participants trying to make sense of their experiences.
Though preliminary, initial conclusions provide evidence for the need to attend to (human) capital as being situated in a broader framework. They suggest that despite no evidence of increased student performance, the PATH program influences the accumulation of a number of other capitals which have and are envisaged to improve beneficiaries’ lives. Emerging findings as to its influence also on identity and social capital formation has important policy implications. For CCTs to achieve their ultimate goal of poverty eradication, policy designers and evaluators need to understand their levels and means of influence. This is especially important at a time where CCT programs are rapidly increasing in number, making this research both pertinent and timely.

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