Spillovers in Social Programme Participation: Evidence fro m Chile” joint with Pedro Carneiro, Barbara Flores, Emanuela Galasso, Rita Ginja and Lucy Kraftman
Abstract:
We analyze how peers affect the participation in a famil y allowance for poor families in Chile called Subsidio Unico Familiar (SUF) using a regression discontinuity design. To identify the spillovers effect , we exploit variation in the information about social programs due to a ho me-visitation program for families in extreme poverty introduced in 2002 ca lled Chile Solidario (CS). Conditional on an index of wealth, eligibility t o receive the home-visits are random around municipality level cutoffs. We find that not only individual participation in CS increases the take-up of SUF, but that participation in SUF also responds to neighbors' participatio n in CS. In particular, we estimate network effects on participation in soc ial programs of about .5. To put this figure in context, if neighbors' part icipation in SUF increases by 3.7pp, then the participation of the househol d increases by 1.5pp. To understand the mechanisms through which peer effec ts operate, we allow for heterogeneity for different types of networks.
DTSTAMP:20260407T161257Z DTSTART:20200507T163000Z DTEND:20200507T173000Z SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR