141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

285830
Cash transfers and teen pregnancy in an HIV-endemic setting: A regression discontinuity approach

Monday, November 4, 2013 : 3:10 PM - 3:30 PM

Jacob Bor , Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA
Cash transfers may be an effective strategy to improve reproductive health among adolescent girls. South Africa has a generous cash welfare system, as well the world's largest HIV burden. Using longitudinal data from a large population surveillance system in rural South Africa, I assess the impact of South Africa's CSG on teenage pregnancy – an important reproductive health outcome and widely used marker of HIV risk. In recent years, South Africa has expanded eligibility for the CSG: children born on or after 1 January 1994 are eligible through age 17 years, whereas those born before 1994 lost eligibility at age 14. In regression-discontinuity models, I find that the hazard of teen pregnancy (ages 14-17 years) is 30% lower among girls in cohorts eligible for the grant. These results are robust to a wide range of specifications. Two-stage least squares estimates imply that being a grant beneficiary reduced the probability of early teen pregnancy by two-thirds. School enrollment also increased among eligible cohorts.

Learning Areas:
Biostatistics, economics
Epidemiology
Public health or related public policy
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Describe the causal effect of an unconditional cash transfer program on teen pregnancy in rural South Africa.

Keywords: Reproductive Health, Economic Analysis

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have written several papers on the economics and epidemiology of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.