Cash is not enough: child discipline, humanitarian assistance, and Syrian refugees in Lebanon

The effects of cash programs in humanitarian settings on caregiver’s use of child discipline has not been widely studied. Violent discipline on children can have long adverse effects lasting into adulthood. Poverty and food insecurity are both correlated with violent discipline and present a potential pathway for cash transfers to affect this outcome. I use three years of data from 2018, 2019, and 2020 for Syrian refugees in Lebanon to assess the impact of two large cash programs: Multi-Purpose Cash and Cash for Food. Assistance for each program is distributed in a bottom up approach based on households’ proxy mean test (PMT) score, a proxy for vulnerability, that allows for the use of a regression discontinuity design (RDD). Findings suggest that neither program affects parents’ use of discipline. In this context, large monthly cash transfers, each worth approximately 50% of monthly household expenditure on average, are not enough to improve violent discipline outcomes. To address violent discipline, other research has found that cash plus programs, which in addition to cash transfers, include programming to instruct caregivers how to discipline children in a non-violent manner effectively decreases use of violent discipline.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural & Applied Econ

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Paur, Brayden Matthew

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lyons , Angela
• Kass-Hanna, Josephine
• Janzen, Sarah
• Arends-Kuenning , Mary

• Humanitarian Assistance
• Refugees
• Child Discipline
• Syria
• Lebanon
• Syrian Refugees
• Regression Discontinuity Design
• Impact Evaluation
• UNHCR

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Brayden Paur

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116256

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116256