Impact of Cash Transfers on Child Health Status by Gender in Kenya

Abstract

Diarrhoea and malnutrition are major problems afflicting children in Kenya and other developing countries. This is detrimental to human  capital development and child well-being. This paper aims at evaluating the potential impact of cash transfers on nutritional status and  incidence of diarrhoea among children below five years and differentiated by gender in Kenya. Because the cash transfers are not  randomly assigned, propensity score matching methods were applied to a nationally representative household survey to examine  whether unconditional cash transfers aid child human capital development. We provide empirical evidence that children in cash transfer- receiving households differ from those in non-recipient households. Second, we show that the unconditional cash transfers have  potential to influence human capital development. However, girls are generally in an underprivileged situation in Kenya. Whereas cash  transfers reduced the incidence of diarrhoea and malnutrition for boys in cash transfer-receiving households, in the case of girls the  impact of cash transfers was not significant in case of diarrhoea or it was significant but adversely affected nutritional status. These  results are comparable to other evaluations of unconditional cash transfers around the world. The results suggest there is scope for cash  transfer programmes to promote human capital development among vulnerable households. Consequently, there is a case for  expanding the cash transfers and ensuring efficient and effective administrative structure for targeting, disbursement and accountability