Conditional Cash Transfers and High School Graduation: Evidence from a Large-Scale Program

Dominican Republic educational, administrative, and household records from participants in a large-scale conditional cash transfer program. The dataset, created by Manuel A. Hernandez, was last updated in June 2026 and is used to examine the program's impact on high school graduation rates, employment, and life outcomes. It likely contains variables on transfer amounts, graduation status, grades, and demographic information.

Use Cases

• Estimate the causal impact of cash transfers on graduation likelihood based on quasi-experimental variation in transfer amounts.
• Analyze differential program effects by gender and location (urban vs. rural) as mentioned in the description.
• Investigate the relationship between the timing of transfers (e.g., final year of high school) and educational outcomes.
• Study the longer-term effects of the program on employment, salaries, and the postponement of parenthood.

Strengths

• Data combines extensive educational, administrative, and household records from a national-scale program.
• Analysis shows a specific, quantified impact: an 11.7–13.2 percentage-point higher likelihood of school completion.
• Published under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license, allowing for broad reuse and redistribution.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for certain modeling tasks.
• The description notes impacts on school performance (grades and on-time graduation) are less clear and vary by area.

Provenance

Source

Manuel A. Hernandez via figshare.

Collection Method

Data likely gathered from program administrative records and household surveys, combined using a quasi-experimental approach.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-02 09:34:00; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Dominican Republic