TY - JOUR
T1 - Conditional cash transfers, civil conflict and insurgent influence
T2 - Experimental evidence from the Philippines
AU - Crost, Benjamin
AU - Felter, Joseph H.
AU - Johnston, Patrick B.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Eli Berman, Christian Deloria, Radha Iyengar, Daniel Rees, Jacob Shapiro, and participants at the NBER Economics of National Security summer session and the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) Annual Meeting for comments on earlier versions. Felter and Johnston acknowledge support from AFOSR Award No. FA9550-09-1-0314 . Any opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect AFOSR's views. Felter acknowledges financial support from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) through Award N000141110735 at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Funding Information:
This paper studies the Pantawid Pamilya program, a conditional cash-transfer program implemented by the Philippine government's Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and partly funded through loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Since it began in 2007, the program financed transfers to approximately one million households in 782 cities and municipalities in 81 provinces in all 17 regions of the Philippines. 7 7 It is currently the country's flagship antipoverty program.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2016/1/1
Y1 - 2016/1/1
N2 - Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are an increasingly popular tool for reducing poverty in conflict-affected areas. Despite their growing popularity, there is limited evidence on how CCT programs affect conflict and theoretical predictions are ambiguous. We estimate the effect of conditional cash transfers on civil conflict in the Philippines by exploiting an experiment that randomly assigned eligibility for a CCT program at the village level. We find that cash transfers caused a substantial decrease in conflict-related incidents in treatment villages relative to control villages in the first 9 months of the program. Using unique data on local insurgent influence, we also find that the program reduced insurgent influence in treated villages. An analysis of possible spillovers yields inconclusive results. While we find no statistical evidence of spillovers, we also cannot rule out that the village-level effect was due to displacement of insurgent activity from treatment to control villages.
AB - Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are an increasingly popular tool for reducing poverty in conflict-affected areas. Despite their growing popularity, there is limited evidence on how CCT programs affect conflict and theoretical predictions are ambiguous. We estimate the effect of conditional cash transfers on civil conflict in the Philippines by exploiting an experiment that randomly assigned eligibility for a CCT program at the village level. We find that cash transfers caused a substantial decrease in conflict-related incidents in treatment villages relative to control villages in the first 9 months of the program. Using unique data on local insurgent influence, we also find that the program reduced insurgent influence in treated villages. An analysis of possible spillovers yields inconclusive results. While we find no statistical evidence of spillovers, we also cannot rule out that the village-level effect was due to displacement of insurgent activity from treatment to control villages.
KW - Civil conflict
KW - Conditional cash transfers
KW - Insurgency
KW - Philippines
KW - Randomized control trial
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.08.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.08.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84945956528
VL - 118
SP - 171
EP - 182
JO - Journal of Development of Economics
JF - Journal of Development of Economics
SN - 0304-3878
ER -