Replication Data for: "More is Better but for Whom? The Heterogeneous Effects of Cash Transfer Amounts and Conditionality on School Enrollment in Malawi"

Cash transfers, both conditional and unconditional, are a form of wealth redistribution that increase school enrollment and help advance Millennium Development Goals. Transfers could be targeted to maximize cost-effectiveness given finite resources; however, there is limited evidence regarding marginal impacts of conditionality and increasing transfer amounts, or which groups benefit most. In 2011, Baird et al. reported findings of a cluster randomized controlled trial in Malawi demonstrating conditionality increased school enrollment and higher transfer amounts to parents or subjects had no incremental effect on enrollment. We improve upon their analysis by remodeling the categorical outcomes using weighted logistic regressions with a binomial rather than normal stochastic component, and examining incremental effects of total transfer amounts to households. We find higher transfers amounts improve enrollment for both conditional and unconditional schemes and are more influential in the conditional group. Additionally, we find varying effects among unconditional subgroups over time. We conclude that in Sub-Saharan African settings such as Malawi, cash transfer programs to improve school enrollment should be conditional, and minimal transfer amounts are suboptimal to maintain enrollment gains for sustained periods. Unconditional cash transfers in these settings should consider recipients'€™ age and baseline household index, as they influence enrollment outcomes.