Children's opportunities and impact evaluation

Impact evaluation of social policies often adopts a positive rather than a normative perspective. “Impact” refers to the change of an outcome that can be attributed only to the effect of the policy. The evaluation problem thus resides in extracting the “causal effect” of the program or policy under study. However, such interpretation can be identified with a positive rather than a normative perspective which requires value judgements of ethical, political, or aesthetic nature. That is, an evaluation from a normative perspective looks at what ought to be instead of what it is. The purpose of my thesis is to connect both perspectives by offering an evaluation of a Conditional Cash Transfer program in Mexico from the perspective of children’s opportunities. To do that, I combine methods from the impact evaluation and inequality of opportunity literature. In particular, I analyze to which extent the program affects opportunities for health, cognitive development, and education of participant children. The thesis is organized as follows: Chapter 1 offers the analysis of health outcomes for children aged 2-6 years. To establish the effect of the program, conditional cumulative distribution functions for children in and out the program are compared according to stochastic dominance criteria. The methodology allows to identify where in the distribution the program is effective for children whose parents have certain characteristics or types as is referred to in the literature of equality of opportunity. The main finding from this chapter is that the treatment has substantial positive effects on the health opportunities for children from indigenous parents. Also, some effects are found on non-indigenous children, although these are weaker. Chapter 2 concentrates on cognitive and non-cognitive early child development. Four indicators of cognitive and one of non-cognitive ability are analyzed. As in Chapter 1, the analysis relies on stochastic dominance criteria using conditional cumulative distribution functions. The ...