Last updated on April 28, 2013
We have all seen the commercials on television. Many of them readily fall under the broad name of “poverty porn,” and most of them feature resigned-looking developing-world children set against a sad soundtrack. All of them ask us to help by sponsoring a child in a developing country.
But does international child sponsorship work? In a new article (older, ungated copy here) in the Journal of Political Economy, Bruce Wydick, Paul Glewwe, and Laine Rutledge give an answer that is bound to surprise many development cynics:
Child sponsorship is a leading form of direct aid from wealthy country households to children in developing countries. Over 9 million children are supported through international sponsorship organizations. Using data from six countries, we estimate impacts on several outcomes from sponsorship through Compassion International, a leading child sponsorship organization. To identify program effects, we utilize an age-eligibility rule implemented when programs began in new villages. We find large, statistically significant impacts on years of schooling; primary, secondary, and tertiary school completion; and the probability and quality of employment. Early evidence suggests that these impacts are due, in part, to increases in children’s aspirations.
The thing that stands out here, to me, is the fact that the program evaluated was one with direct child sponsorship. Many of the big NGOs (Plan and World Vision) do child sponsor programs as a fundraising tool, but not as a development intervention. That distinction is important because it seems that the results can only be applied to direct child sponsorship. Even further, it seems that it is more of an evaluation of a program than the sponsorship itself. I wonder what it would look like if the same program was enacted without the direct sponsors.