study the observed school at which students enrolled and study whether the program affects the type of sub systems in which a child enrolls.<sup>4</sup> At the secondary level (seventh through ninth) there are several different types of secondary schools. The different types, broadly speaking, are 1) tele-secondary schools that use electronic media or television to provide education through distance learning and are generally located in more rural areas, 2) technical secondary schools that are vocational, 3) general secondary schools with traditional academic curriculums and 4) private schools. Similarly, at the high school level or medio superior the main options are 1) general high schools with traditional academic programs that prepare students to continue studying at university, 2) technical high schools that have academic focus but with technical and vocational training, 3) technical professional schools that aim to combine studies with work and 4) private schools.

Enrollment processes for public secondary and high schools are decentralized and carried out at the state level, with Federal regulation. Each state carries out its own enrollment process where each student generally takes an exam and fills out an application specifying the schools of his/her preference and a school is assigned to each student based on the student’s performance, locality of residence and existence of siblings already enrolled at the school.

With regard to achievement, the central hypothesis is that the program, by increasing time spent in school, should lead to greater learning and thus better performance on standardized achievement tests. Such impacts might be limited however if increases in enrollment due to the program also lead to overcrowding in schools and thus reducing schooling quality. Further, schools with lower quality might have lower effects on learning than schools with higher quality. Finally, if PROSPERA affects the type of school chosen, for example by increasing the probability of enrolling in a higher quality school, this is also a possible mechanism through which the program might affect learning. We are unaware of impact studies that analyze the effect of the program on schooling supply and quality, but we consider this an important area for future research. A final consideration is the impact of PROSPERA on both parents and students with respect to learning. Parents might pressure students and/or students might feel pressured to attend school more regularly and to improve performance due to their beneficiary status, which might translate to increased effort on standardized testing.

# **III. Related Literature**

Most quantitative impact studies of the effects of PROSPERA derive from the initial 1997 experimental evaluation in which 506 rural communities from seven Mexican states were randomized into a treatment and a control group. Of these communities, 320 were randomly assigned to receive benefits immediately and the other 186 to receive benefits later. Eligible households in

> 4 An important question is the extent to which students are located close enough to schools such that there is in fact more than one plausible option for attending. Ideally such an analysis would construct a measure of available schools based on geographic distance and access to roads from the student’s residence. We leave this possibility for future research.

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