Impact of In-kind Social Transfer Programs on the Labor Supply: a Gender Perspective

Abstract

In recent years, Peru has expanded its social programs aimed at combating poverty, with new initiatives including the Cuna Más childcare program and the Qali Warma school meals program. The goal of this paper is to determine whether these social programs have made any impact on the working hours of men and women belonging to the beneficiary households. According to time-allocation approaches and gender-based household roles, a different impact on each of these two groups might be expected. In econometric terms, it is well known that hours worked are the result of a sample selection process that could bias ordinary least square estimations, and even (within-group) fixed effect estimations, which control for unobserved heterogeneity bias but not selection bias. We use Kyriazidou’s (1997) method to estimate a model of determinants of hours worked, and find gender-differentiated impacts; the Qali Warma breakfast program fosters female labor supply among those aged below 25 and above 40, while Cuna Más does so only for those below the age of 25. In the case of men, the Qali Warma breakfast program also seems to increase hours worked (albeit to a lesser extent than for women), while the school lunches version of the same program reduces hours worked, especially for men over the age of 40.