Peer-reviewed article
Who benefits from conditional cash transfers? New evidence on child well-being from Indonesia
Firdaus Finuliyah, Moh. Khusaini, Ferry Prasetyia, Al Muizzuddin Fazaalloh ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study evaluates Indonesia's Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH), a large conditional cash transfer program, to understand how it affects child well-being. Using national survey data from 2022 and causal analysis methods, researchers found that the program significantly improved outcomes for children. The effects varied depending on families' circumstances and local institutional capacity. The research addresses a gap in evidence about how social protection programs influence child protection and care outcomes.
Key points
- PKH produced significant improvements in child well-being overall
- Effects varied across different socio-demographic and institutional contexts
- The analysis used inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) to estimate causal impacts
- Research builds evidence on the link between social protection and child protection and care outcomes
- The scale and institutional maturity of Indonesia's cash transfer programs enabled robust assessment
Limitations
The abstract does not specify which dimensions of child well-being were measured, the magnitude of improvements, or the specific characteristics of families and contexts where effects differed. Details on program design, eligibility criteria, and outcome metrics are not available from the metadata provided.
Abstract
No entitlement is more fundamental to children than the right to survive and flourish across all dimensions of life. Promoting child well-being requires not only safeguarding against risks but also enabling children to achieve their full developmental potential. However, research linking social protection to child protection and care outcomes remains limited, and guidance on designing programs to strengthen family unity and ensure quality care is underdeveloped. This study contributes new evidence from Indonesia, where the scale and institutional maturity of conditional cash transfer programs provide a unique opportunity to assess their effectiveness. Using the 2022 National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) and applying an inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) approach, the analysis yields robust causal estimates of the impacts of Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH), Indonesia’s flagship conditional cash transfer program. The results confirm significant improvements in child well-being, while heterogeneous effects reveal variation across socio-demographic and institutional contexts.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH), Indonesia's conditional cash transfer program
- Population
- Children and families in Indonesia receiving PKH
Key finding
Program Keluarga Harapan produced significant improvements in child well-being