CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Castro Rodriguez, Maria Paola |
|---|---|
| Title | The Effect of Cash Conditional Transfer Programs on Teenage Pregnancy: The Case of Juntos |
| Summary | Over the last two decades, the Peruvian rate of teenage pregnancy has remained around 10%. Despite well-established evidence about the negative effects of early childbearing on several dimensions of women's lives, Peruvian social policies lack a multidisciplinary approach to address this matter. Furthermore, the few improvements in health and education strategies (family planning services, sex education programmes and awareness of domestic and sexual violence) are being dismantled by congress representatives in an attempt to impose personal beliefs on public affairs. With the rise of evidence-based policy, many scholars have found unintended effects on social programs. For instance, evidence suggests that Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have affected women's empowerment, intimate partner violence, and changes in sexual and reproductive behaviour. This evidence encourages the present research to examine the effects of Peruvian CCT, Juntos, on teenage pregnancy. It is believed that educational conditions create incentives to change the behaviour of the family members, which increases parental supervision to avoid risky sexual behaviours and increases educational aspirations for both female and male students. This paper exploits the staggered implementation of Juntos, and combining both difference-in-differences framework and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 2005 to 2019, I find that Juntos reduced teenage pregnancy by 4% in the Andes region. Further analysis suggests that this reduction might be driven by the increase in abstinence from sexual relations. |
| Supervisor | Mihaly Fazekas |
| Department | Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/castro_maria-paola.pdf |
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