Determining the effects of conditional cash transfers on educational attainment

The concerns with how to narrow the socio-economic gap in education have been a major policy issue for
several decades. In order to encourage young people, especially those from low-income families, to stay
in education, a number of countries have put forward conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. In the
UK, the Education Maintenance Allowance programme (EMA) was designed to raise the post-compulsory
enrolment rate. Although a large body of research has investigated the impact of EMA on the
participation, retention and achievement in secondary school, there is very little literature exploring the
long-term effect of EMA. This research is planning to use the Next Steps and Our Future datasets and
adopt quasi-experimental methods, such as regression discontinuity design, propensity score matching
and entropy balancing. It will contribute to the existing literature by providing more evidence on the longterm
impact of EMA since its roll-out nationally and its comparison with the impact of the policy that has
replaced it (16-19 Bursary Fund) and CCT programmes in other countries.
The key research questions to be answered are:
1. How does EMA receipt status influence higher education participation and degree attainment? Is the
impact of EMA explained further by individual background characteristics?
2. Does the impact of 16 to 19 Bursary Fund differs from the impact of EMA?
3. What are the effects of CCTs on educational attainment in other countries?