Mexico has a longstanding experience in providing educational grants to students in poor families. The Prospera program, previously known as Progresa and Oportunidades, has as its primary objective the coordination of government social policies aimed to foster production, increase incomes and facilitate access to labor, health and education for poor households.

In 2014, Prospera sought to assess the potential change of making the students the direct recipients of the educational grants, in place of the head of the household. Sistemas Integrales was appointed to collaborate with Prospera and the Inter-American Development Bank to evaluate the potential impact of such an innovation.

A randomized control trial study included a treatment group of individual students as direct recipients of funds and a control group of household heads as recipients. It aimed at identifying each group’s decision-making process for using the funds, with the questionnaire including modules on consumption and economic activity of the head of the household and of the prospective student.

Sistemas Integrales provided expertise on several elements of the study:

• sample design
• custom questionnaires and other instruments for data collection
• training plan
• quality assurance for fieldwork procedures