More than just a black-board: Cash transfers and adolescent education in South Africa

Please note: This paper has been updated. Cash transfers are a well-known tool in the developing world to alleviate poverty. However, much of the research evaluating these programs has focussed on short term outcomes, in populations of younger children. Using exogenous changes in the age eligibility limit of an unconditional cash transfer to South African children, this paper examines the current and cumulative impact of grant receipt on the educational outcomes of older adolescents. We find that while current grant receipt raises enrolment rates, longer exposure to this cash transfer does not predict higher years of education attained, or other similar measures of cumulative attainment. This finding emphasises the crucial nature of school quality for educational attainment - a hypothesis that the data supports. It is clear that education is a function of more than just a blackboard - quality of school matters too