「经济学人」Conditional cash transfers

At least in Britain

Andy burnham was unhappy. The government was “kicking away the ladder of opportunity”, he argued in January 2011. Mr Burnham, who was then a Labour mp and is now mayor of Greater Manchester, accused the government of “stacking the odds” against young people. And he had a warning for the Tories, who were running Britain in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. If they did not relent, young people would never vote for them.

The policy that infuriated Mr Burnham was the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance (ema) in England. This paid 16- to 19-year-olds up to £30 ($38) a week if they stayed in full-time education. One in three teenagers received some cash, with the biggest payments going to those from the poorest households. Handouts continue in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, although inflation has made them less generous. Labour MPs lamented the loss of the ema for years; their party went into the 2019 general election promising to restore it. But it now looks as though the coalition government was right.

On February 26th the Institute of Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, released a report on how the ema affected English teenagers who were entitled to free school meals because of their parents’ poverty. By comparing teenagers before and after the payments were rolled out nationwide in 2004, the researchers estimate that the ema persuaded some to stay in school. Full-time enrolment in Year 12, in which a pupil turns 17, rose by 2.5 percentage points. Those who had scored poorly in exams were especially motivated to stay on.

Unfortunately, it seems not to have helped them. Cash payments did not boost subsequent university attendance among poor teenagers. And the ema appears to have pulled many young people into classrooms who would otherwise have been studying part-time or taking part in workplace training schemes such as apprenticeships. The loss of practical experience and training seems to have hurt. Not only did teenagers earn less from working as a result of the handouts, as you would expect. They also went on to earn less, and were more likely to receive unemployment benefits. Their earnings between the ages of 20 and 28 appear to have been suppressed by £1,660, adjusting for inflation.

Labour mps were wrong to complain about the abolition of the ema. But their warnings about the political consequences were astute. It was one of several youth-baiting measures introduced by the Conservative-led government. Shortly before Parliament voted to stop the payments, it allowed universities to charge much higher tuition fees. A few months later, it introduced a “triple lock” for the state pension, which has led to increases in that benefit. Young people did, indeed, abandon the Tories. Nobody likes to lose a treat, even if it is bad for you.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Reading, writing and arithmetic”(Feb 27th 2025)

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