Table 7. Contribution of PROSPERA in height and schooling, and in other relevant variables by time of <u>exposure</u>

||(1)|(2)|(4)|(5)|(6)|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|VARIABLES|Mobility<br>height|Mobility<br>education|BMI|Cognitive<br>score|Memory<br>score|
|Group 1 vs Group 0|3.991***|3.728***|-7.008***|1.379***|0.751***|
||(0.616)|(0.396)|(0.541)|(0.195)|(0.162)|
|Observations|589|1,168|1,121|1,128|1,172|
|Group 2 vs Group 0|3.548***|3.022***|-5.093***|1.295***|0.690***|
||(0.572)|(0.284)|(0.316)|(0.186)|(0.136)|
|Observations|1,114|2,378|2,294|2,292|2,382|
|Group 3 vs Group 0|1.762***|2.541***|-2.294***|0.776***|0.532***|
||(0.536)|(0.268)|(0.363)|(0.187)|(0.127)|
|Observations|673|1,428|1,382|1,373|1,431|
|Group 1,2 and 3 vs Group 0|3.093***|2.953***|-4.642***|1.066***|0.624***|
||(0.465)|(0.279)|(0.325)|(0.165)|(0.161)|
|Observations|1,882|3,999|3,850|3,866|4,004|

Notes: The estimations are contrasts between the matching differences of the indicator between the group of exposure and the comparison group. Variables for matching: ln of the provider’s height, eligibility score of PROSPERA in 1997 (linear and square), classification as poor household in 1997, youth’s gender, provider’s gender, provider’s age (linear and square), provider’s education, in 1997, two-months period when the transfers of PROSPERA were first received in the household of origin, number of persons in the household in 1997, and labor income of the household in 1997. Standard errors in parentheses. Level of significance *** _p<_ 0.01, ** _p<_ 0.05, * _p<_ 0.1. Source: estimations by propensity score matching based on data from the Evaluation of Rural Households Survey (ENCEL) 2017, complemented with data from the panel of ENCEL 1997-2000.

Absolute mobility in schooling is translated into 2.5 additional years on average for the group with lower exposure to PROSPERA and 3.7 additional years on average for youth who started receiving the program during early childhood, in comparison with the group that started receiving the program when they were no longer in critical periods for growth and development. For this outcome differences in gender are not as pronounced as in the case of height.

As a complement to the absolute mobility estimators in schooling, we estimated the simple differences in scores on the cognitive and memory test performed in ENCEL 2017. We do this because we do not have information about the provider from when the youth were 14 years of age.

These results show the same logic of the gradient associated with exposure to PROSPERA; consistent with the results observed for education and height. Here, the gains in both scores are slightly higher for males than for females (Appendix E). These results suggest that the gains in years of schooling are accompanied by gains in cognitive performance, although the latter cannot be measured in an intergenerational manner, due to limitations of the data.

The analysis by sub-population does not have a sufficient number of observations, resulting in a lack of common support in the matching estimator. For this reason, we present the estimation for the group of individuals who speak an indigenous language, without differentiating by gender. Table 8 shows that for the population who speaks an indigenous language the mobility gains in height are relatively lower than those estimated for the total of the population. This occurs in spite of the fact that the mobility potential we estimated in section VII.A was similar to that of the total population. In terms of mobility in schooling, the gains are greater among the population speaking an indigenous language, but the estimators for the cognitive and memory development present 29