Breaking the poverty cycle? Conditional cash transfers and higher education attainment

This paper analyses the effects of the Peruvian 2005 Juntos Conditional Cash Transfer, program on higher education attainment and by gender. Based on the Young Lives Survey and using matching techniques, we find that Juntos has a positive effect on higher education attainment. Recipients are 8.5 percentage points more likely to attain technical studies, and this positive result remains regarding the matching technique used. Moreover, after controlling for community and cognitive test variables, recipients are 11.4 percentage points more likely to attain university studies. The positive effect of Juntos, however, is only for men and not for women revealing a gender gap in higher education attainment among Juntos recipients.