Promoting the itemized educational spending of rural coastal households in Bangladesh through unconditional cash and food assistance

Abstract

The vulnerable households in the rural coastal regions of Bangladesh have been suffering from chronic poverty because of a lack of resources to invest in the human capital development, such as education and training. The unconditional cash and food (UCF) assistance programs in Bangladesh have been designed to combat chronic poverty. This study examines the impact of the UCF assistance receipt on the itemized educational spending: the total spending on education, school tiffin, educational stationery, uniforms, admission fees, examinations, textbooks, education-related Internet, and education-related transportation by the households. A Fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) is used as an identification strategy, in which the assignment variable is the land ownership by the households. The RDD method is based on the idea that the households just below and above the cutoff of the assignment variable are locally randomized, therefore free from any selection bias. The results consistently show that the UCF assistance increases the spending on all educational items, except for textbooks and education-related transportation. This study suggests that the UCF assistance can be used as a policy tool to accelerate the sustainable development goal of inclusive quality education for rural coastal areas by increasing the itemized spending on education.