Paper short abstract:

This study investigates the intergenerational effects of Mexico's Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera program on educational achievements, labour market outcomes and fertility decisions.

Paper long abstract:

While conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in developing countries have been implemented to break the inter-generational cycles of poverty, evidence has been largely restricted to the short, medium and recently also longer-term impacts on the recipients. However, there is a very limited knowledge base with regard to how exposure to CCTs affects the intergenerational social mobility of beneficiaries when comparing recipients' parent's characteristics. This study aims to contribute to the literature by examining the intergenerational effects of Mexico's Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera program (POP) on educational achievements, labour market outcomes and fertility decisions.

We use panel data from the Mexican Family Life Surveys (MXFLS), covering the period 2002-2009/12. The MXFLS are nationally representative surveys, tracking individuals migrating nationally and internationally, and also collecting retrospective information on parents' labour market outcomes. This allows us to mitigate selection bias from non-random attrition through migration or graduating from the program by escaping poverty and disentangle the cumulative impact of POP across generations.

We exploit the exogenous variation in the expansion of POP, as well as its targeting criteria, to implement in a quasi-experimental framework, difference-in-difference estimators and a regression discontinuity design for the identification of the causal effects of POP.