Impact of Programa Juntos on food expenditure in rural household, 2015

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to estimate the impact of the Juntos Program on the per capita expenditure on food in rural households, as a source of information is used the National Household Survey - 2015 database, the methodology is the design technique Quasi-experimental Propensity Score Matching - PSM with the Nearest Neighbor Matching technique, this method consists in comparing the per capita expenditure on food obtained by each beneficiary treated with the control group having the most propensity score then the difference between each pair of paired households in the per capita expenditure on food is calculated and then all differences are averaged to calculate the ATT. The unit of analysis is the rural households of the sierra and selva of Peru in condition of poverty and extreme poverty. The results report that the probability of participating in the Juntos program depends on the characteristics of the household, the home and the head of household. The results also suggest that the Juntos program has a positive impact on food per capita spending, for those rural households in poverty and extreme poverty, the Juntos program has increased per capita spending by 8.9% (ATT = 0.089) to one Level of significance of 10%.