Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development
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World Bank, Washington, DC
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Signs of development delays and
malnutrition are widespread among young children in
low-income settings. Social protection programs such as cash
transfers are increasingly combined with behavioral change
promotion or parenting interventions to improve early
childhood development. This paper disentangles the effects
of behavioral change promotion from cash transfers to poor
households through an experiment embedded in a government
program in Niger. The study is also designed to identify
within-community spillovers from the behavioral change
intervention. The findings show that behavioral change
promotion affects a range of practices related to nutrition,
health, stimulation, and child protection. Local spillovers
on parenting practices are also found. Moderate gains in
children's socio-emotional development are observed,
but there are no improvements in anthropometrics or
cognitive development. Cash transfers alone do not alter
parenting practices or improve early childhood development.
Cash transfers improve welfare and food security at the
household level, and the behavioral intervention induces
intra-household reallocations toward children.
Palabras clave
EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT, PARENTING, BEHAVIORAL CHANGE COMMUNICATION, CASH TRANSFERS, SPILLOVER EFFECT, FIELD EXPERIMENT, MALNUTRITION, COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT