| Resumen: |
Mexico’s pioneering conditional cash transfer program—originallyProgresa, later renamedProspera—operated over two decades in a shifting educational landscape. We exploit theprogram’s sudden and unexpected rollback to estimate whether, two decades after rolloutstudies documented its initial impacts on schooling and labor, the program was still effectiveat raising enrollment and reducing work in children and youth. Comparing areas with high andlow program penetration before and after rollback, we find that rollback immediately reducedschool enrollment, especially at high school ages and especially in boys. Effects on enrollmentwere as large at rollback as they were at rollout, albeit shifted from middle-school ages to high-school ages. Rising work mirrored falling enrollment in boys of high school age. Our resultssuggest the program successfully adapted to the rise of high school, but Mexico’s poor wereunable to protect their children from the its unexpected rollback |
