# **VI. Conclusions**

This paper uses nationwide information on ENLACE achievement tests to test whether the PROSPERA program, which has been shown in numerous evaluation studies to increase school enrollment, leads to significant increases in learning. We construct a panel of sixth graders and follow their achievement up through twelfth grade, comparing achievement of beneficiaries to non-beneficiaries. The data set we construct also allows us to estimate impacts of PROSPERA on enrollment and on the type of school in which PROSPERA beneficiaries enroll. We study impacts by gender for the entire sample of sixth graders in schools in medium to very high poverty communities and for the subsample of sixth graders in indigenous schools, which we use as a proxy to measure impacts for the indigenous.

Estimated enrollment effects confirm large effects of participating in the PROSPERA program. Although positive effects have been documented before, our results are innovative in that they are based on administrative rather than parental self-reported information on children’s school attendance. The results are however quite similar to previous studies based on parental reports, showing important and significant effects on enrollment both in secondary and high school, for girls and boys and for the indigenous and non-indigenous. The analysis of type of school enrolled showed that, for secondary schools, the program increases the probability of enrolling in a tele-secondary school but does not affect the probability of enrolling in a general school. At the high school level, the probability of attending a general school increases relative to the probability of attending a technical school.

To estimate effects on achievement, we use specifications where the outcome measure is the difference in test scores. These differenced models essentially allow for individual fixed effects, which are assumed to be sufficient to control for selectivity in test-taking. Such control is necessary because some children are induced to take the achievement tests by the PROSPERA program. Our results indicate increases in achievement on the order of 0.03 to 0.1 standard deviations both for boys and girls in the sample of children in marginalized areas and on the order of 0.1 on Spanish tests, with statistically insignificant results in mathematics for the indigenous in secondary schools. We did not observe changes in achievement on the twelfth grade ENLACE, but we were constrained by being unable to construct a continuous measure of differences in achievement across years unlike the cases for seventh and ninth grade. In sum, these results provide evidence of small positive effects on achievement due to PROSPERA and provide evidence that the increases in school enrollment led to greater academic achievement. The achievement impacts we estimate are conditional on an attained level of schooling. Thus, they capture effects of PROSPERA participation on achievement that are distinct from the general effect of schooling on achievement.

Several questions remain for further research, particularly with regard to school quality. What is the relationship between type of school attended and achievement and how are effects on achievement interrelated with type of school attended and school quality? What determines the school at which beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries enroll and what are the effects of available 36