My undergraduate research project with OSCAR in the Fall of 2018 was one of the most rewarding experiences of my undergraduate career. I chose to research the impacts of cash transfers, programs aimed at reducing poverty by giving low-income families cash stipends, sometimes with attached conditions on things like school enrollment. The effectiveness of cash transfer programming in meeting education and health goals for low-income populations has gained the attention of international development professionals around the world. I am interested in researching methods in which international development programs can become more impactful so non-profits and international organizations can better utilize limited resources to serve those in need abroad. Since cash transfers have been a proven to be a relatively low-cost method of empowering vulnerable families, I wanted to learn more about the impacts these programs could have.
My project consisted of using Baird, Ozler, and McIntosh’s dataset published in Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment where they collected data on the impact of cash transfer programming on school enrollment, test scores, teenage pregnancy, and marriage rates for school-age girls in Malawi. I spent my time in the DiSC lab at the Fenwick library so I could utilize the STATA software. I first replicated the do-file attached with the data set in order to learn more about STATA programming and the data I was working with. Then I ran my own analysis to look into the relationship between family dynamics and the effectiveness of conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs. I was curious to see if the household size or if household was headed by a female impacted the results of the cash transfer program.
This research experience taught me about an important program in the field of international development and gave me statistical analysis experience that I hope to utilize later in my career. In the future, I plan to work in the field of international development in order to serve those in need around the world.
