# **_3.4 In-Kind Transfers_**

In-kind transfers are closely related to conditional cash transfer schemes, but their impacts on child labor outcomes are not necessarily equivalent. To the extent that the goods and services provided by these programs are not fungible, they result in a more limited expansion of the consumption sets of the beneficiary households than (conditional) cash transfers. The impact of conditional in-kind transfers might also differ from the impact of conditional cash transfers because members of the household are forced to consume goods that potentially are complements to (or inputs for) the outcome of interest. For example, by improving the nutrition status of the child, school meals might have a stronger effect on education and child labor outcomes than conditional cash transfers of equal monetary value.<sup>13</sup> In this section, we examine the impact of two types of in-kind transfers where child labor outcomes have been reported: food for education programs and school vouchers.

We first analyze the effects of food for education programs on child labor. School-feeding programs can work as an indirect income transfer to households and affect child labor by reducing the cost of sending a child to school. Ravallion and Wodon (2010) analyze the Food Education Program, which comprises of take-home rations given to poor households with children in primary school in Bangladesh. To receive the ration, children must attend at least 85% of all classes in a month. Using whether the program is present in a child’s village as an instrument for receiving the program, the estimates show a reduction of child labor (measured as engaged in an economic activity inside and outside the household). The observed decline in participation in work, however, is markedly lower than the increases in education amounting to 19 and 18 percentage points respectively for boys and girls.

It appears to matter how meals are delivered to students. Kazianga, de Walque, and Alderman (2012) exploit a cluster randomized trial in which schools in rural Burkina Faso were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: a group in which female pupils receive take-home rations, a group in which all pupils receive school meals, and a control group. Among girls in schools assigned to the take-home rations both farm and non-farm economic activities decreased significantly by 9 percentage points (respectively 57 and 16% among all girls in the control group at baseline). School meals did not significantly affect either of these two activities for boys or girls. It is not clear whether the value of the food disbursed through the school meals and take-home rations programs was comparable. Hence, it is not possible to say whether the difference in the impact of the interventions is due to the difference in the value of the transfer or to a differential impact of school meals and take-home rations.

Second, we turn our focus into the provision of vouchers that lower the cost of attending private schools. This intervention could affect child labor due to the income effect, reduction in the cost of education, the incentives to spend time studying, and changes in the expected returns to schooling given that the child is attending private school which is correlated with higher quality of education in developing countries. Yet, missing from most studies on the effects of vouchers

> 13 For a review of (the rationale behind) in-kind transfers we refer the reader to Currie and Gahvari (2008).

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