Is PROGRESA working? Summary of the results of an evaluation by IFPRI

This document summarises an evaluation of the impact of PROGRESA on three poverty reduction focus areas: improving school enrolment, improving health and nutrition outcomes, and increasing household consumption for poor rural families.

The findings suggest that PROGRESA’s combination of education, health, and nutrition interventions into one integrated package has a significant impact on the welfare and human capital of the poor rural families. The programme has increased the school enrolment of children, particularly of girls at the secondary level. On average, it is anticipated that children will have about 0.7 years of extra schooling because of PROGRESA. Consequently, lifetime earnings are expected to increase by 8 percent due to the education benefits.

It is argued that both children and adults are also experiencing improvements in health. Children receiving PROGRESA’s benefits have a 12 percent lower incidence of illness as a result of the programme’s benefits and adults report a decrease in 19 percent of sick or disability days. PROGRESA has also reduced the probability of stunting for children aged 12 to 36 months.

Programme beneficiaries report higher calorie consumption and eating a more diverse diet. The programme is also found to have no apparent effects on the work incentives of adults, while the award of the cash benefits to mothers in beneficiary households appears to have led to the empowerment of women.

There is however, no measurable impact of the programme on the achievement test scores of children in beneficiary localities or on their school attendance. If the programme is to have a significant effect on the human capital of children, it is argued that more attention needs to be directed to the quality of education provided in schools. Benefits could be linked to performance, by granting bonuses for successful completion of a grade.

Although the targeting of households within poor marginal communities may be a source of more social tensions than social benefits, it is argued that if PROGRESA were to expand in urban areas, some form of targeting would be necessary. Better alternatives to the current reliance of PROGRESA on reported income include the use of household consumption as a measure of poverty.