education, and say little about the actual accumulation of human capital in later stages of life.

The evidence is scant when it comes to the impacts of CCTs on final (or close to final) outcomes in education. Looking at school completion, existing evidence from Pakistan shows that CCT beneficiaries are more likely to complete secondary school by 4 to 6 percentage points (Alam et al., 2010). Barrera-Osorio et al. (2008) evaluated a pilot version of a CCT program implemented in Bogota (Colombia), called _Subsidios_ , and found similar results.<sup>2</sup> As for actual school attainment, only evaluations of _Oportunidades_ in Mexico (previously known as _Progresa_ ) has measured the impact on rural adolescents who were old enough to have plausibly completed their schooling after at least five and a half years of benefits. A first study found that children with exposure to the benefits of approximately two years or more achieve about 0.2 grades of additional schooling (Behrman et al., 2005). Subsequent studies that look at the impacts on young adults with longer periods of exposure to the benefits of _Oportunidades_ (nearly 10 years) show important increases in grades of schooling achieved by program participants and their labor insertion, but no effects on the proportion of high school graduates going to college (Behrman and Parker, 2008; Freije and Rodriguez, 2008).<sup>3</sup> Results from evaluations of programs in Cambodia and Honduras point to similar effects, yet they are estimated through simulation analysis or on samples of younger children who were still in school (Filmer and Schady, 2009; Glewwe and Olinto, 2004).

Similarly, the evidence of program effects on learning outcomes is limited and somewhat mixed, making it difficult to draw conclusions. Improvements in cognitive

> 2 The _Subsidios_ program was implemented in the late 2000 ́s in Bogotá and targeted vulnerable population classified as _Sisben_ level 1 and _Sisben_ 2 based on the proxy-means test constructed with information from a census of the poor. The program‘s transfers and conditions are similar to _Familias en Acción_ , which is a nationwide and older program. However, the _Subsidios_ program offered two other treatments with a different structure of benefits. One is the ―savings treatment,‖ which reserves one third of the bimonthly payment to be given to families as a lump sum at the end of the year, just before enrollment into the subsequent grade level. The other is the ―tertiary treatment,‖ which also reserves part of the bimonthly payment, but then pays families a substantially larger amount if students graduate from high school (eleventh grade). Students who continue to tertiary education are eligible to receive that amount one year earlier than those who do not. These two additional treatments may change the way families respond to the program in two ways: one is due to the reduction in the amount of cash families receive on a bimonthly basis, therefore limiting their liquidity; another is through the incentives created by linking cash transfers directly to grade progression and matriculation in tertiary education.

> 3 It is worth noting that the results of these two papers are not generalizable to the entire population covered by _Oportunidades_ given that the samples of analysis only contain non-migrant rural households. Migrants are expected to have higher enrollment in college and better job opportunities, including higher salaries.

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