Impact evaluation of Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH), the largest conditional cash transfer program of Indonesia

• Apr 15, 2020
• 1 min

MSC evaluated the impact of the PKH conditional cash transfer program—one of the largest social assistance programs in Indonesia managed by the Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA). The primary objective of the PKH program is to reduce the burden of expenditure on poor families and change their behavior towards accessing health, education, and other social welfare services. Our study evaluated the impact of PKH on the key welfare, health, and education indicators and provided recommendations to enhance the achievements of the program.

The objective of this study was to give a snapshot of the implementation of the program and to evaluate the outcomes of key health-seeking and education indicators of the beneficiaries.

The evaluation followed a modified Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) and compared the results of the treatment and comparison groups. The groups were selected from the Unified Database (UDB) of beneficiaries maintained by the government of Indonesia. The treatment group consisted of PKH beneficiaries with a poverty score percentile of 11 to 20 as per the UDB while the comparison group consisted of non-PKH beneficiaries who also fall within the same range. The sample size consisted of 1400 beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries each, selected from 15 provinces across Indonesia.

The study revealed that PKH continues to have a positive impact on health and welfare indicators for the beneficiary households. However, the impact on outcomes can improve through compliance monitoring, especially for indicators like the ante and post-natal care (ANC and PNC) visits for both mothers and babies along with the development monitoring of children and regular height checks.