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This paper studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on the structure of household expenditures on non-durables. We study a policy intervention in the Republic of Macedonia, offering cash transfers to poor households, conditional on having their children attending secondary school. The recipient of the transfer is randomized across municipalities to be either the household head or the mother. Using data collected to evaluate the conditional cash transfer program, we show that the gender of the recipient has an effect on the structure of expenditure shares. Targeting transfers to women increases the expenditure share on food by about 4 to 5%. To study the allocation of expenditures within the food basket, we estimate a demand system for food and we find that targeting payments to mothers induces, for different food categories, not only a significant intercept shift, but also a change in the slope of the Engel curve.
Authors
Orazio Attanasio

Research Fellow University College London
Pedro is a Professor of Economics at University College London and an economist in the IFS' Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice (cemmap).

Research Fellow University College London
Valerie, a Research Fellow of the IFS, is a Reader at the University College London, whose research is focused on modelling intra-household behaviour.

Research Fellow Nova School of Business and Economics
Alex is an IFS Research Fellow, an Associate Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics and a Research Affiliate at the CEPR.
Working Paper details
- DOI
- 10.1920/wp.ifs.2016.1614
- Publisher
- Insitute for Fiscal Studies
Suggested citation
Armand, A et al. (2016). The effect of gender-targeted conditional cash transfers on household expenditures: Evidence from a randomized experiment. London: Insitute for Fiscal Studies. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/effect-gender-targeted-conditional-cash-transfers-household-expenditures-evidence (accessed: 9 February 2025).
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