Effects of targeted cash transfers on children’s welfare: Is it always better to target women?

In this paper, we report results from a novel survey experiment. We study hypothetical allocations across seven consumption categories, and within each category, the allocation to different household members: the mother, the father, and a child. We conducted a between-subject design in Northern Tanzania, where we randomized whether the question on the allocation decision was asked to the mother or to the couple jointly. We find that mothers allocate more to children than do couples. This finding is driven by mothers allocating more to children’s food and clothing consumption. On the other hand, couples allocate more to children’s health expenditures than do mothers. We also show that the time the couple spends on activities with children, the mother’s social parenting skills, and the mother’s depression index are good predictors of total amount allocated to children, the two former predicting more to children whereas the latter predicting less. ∗Institute for International Economics, Stockholm University and Norwegian School of Economics, e-mail: ingvild.almas@iies.su.se †Yale University and Institute for Fiscal Studies, e-mail: orazio.attanasio@yale.edu ‡University of Chile and Institute for Fiscal Studies, e-mail: pjervis@dii.uchile.cl §University of Amsterdam, e-mail: c.ringdal@uva.nl