The Welfare Investment: How Child Sponsorship Is Tied to Future Education and Employment

Education policy in the United States frequently emphasizes outcomes, resources, and the role of parents to measure and predict the success of its students. But how do less-measurable qualities like greater self-esteem and increased awareness of career opportunities impact educational attainment and movement into permanent employment? The authors of Does International Child Sponsorship Work? A Six-Country Study of Impacts on Adult Life Outcomes use data from child sponsorship organizations to illuminate the importance of investing in all aspects of a child’s life, including results on psychological effects that are largely absent from the current dialogue on education policy in the US.

Americans give about $3.29 billion each year in sponsorship to 9.14 million children around the world. A typical sponsor, the authors found, gives around $25-$40 a month to help pay for the child’s education and health expenses, and other programs like wellness retreats that the child might need. This study shows how children who are sponsored by an organization that provides resources and encourages internal psychological development compare to children who are not sponsored at all.

The authors explored the impact of sponsorship on low-income children age twelve and under who were selected into Compassion International, the world’s third-largest child sponsorship program. At Compassion, monthly contributions from sponsors are allocated to benefits typical of most sponsorship organizations, including uniforms, tutoring, spiritual instruction, school materials, healthcare, gifts, and direct monetary transfers to the family. Compassion International is unique among sponsorship organizations, however, in its focus on self-esteem, expectations, and aspirations. This focus on individual child development, it turns out, has important implications for child expectations and achievement, and could help to inform international education reform.

Data was collected on children from a diverse group of six countries—Uganda, Guatemala, the Philippines, India, Kenya, and Bolivia—between June 2008 and August 2010. The authors found that sponsored children achieved 1.79 more years of schooling than their unsponsored peers.

Interestingly, sponsored children also achieved 1.38 more years of schooling than their unsponsored siblings, indicating a lack of spillover effects – that is, non-monetary benefits from the sponsorship like motivation and higher individual expectations that “spill over” to the non-sponsored child. This demonstrates that an investment in a single child’s life impacts mainly their achievements and less so those of others around them, emphasizing the importance of investing in all children.

The extra years of educational attainment add up. The probability of completing elementary school and high school for sponsored children is 4.0 and 13.2 percentage points higher, respectively, than that of non-sponsored children. The probability of graduating from college for sponsored children is 2.4 percentage points higher, a 50 percent increase from the baseline rate of 4.3 percent.

Countries with the lowest baseline rates for education completion yield the greatest impacts from child sponsorships. In Uganda, for example, a sponsorship is linked to 2.47 additional years of overall formal schooling, followed by 1.16 additional years in Kenya.

The authors also found an increase of 5.1 and 6.5 percentage points towards the probability of formal employment and “white collar” employment, respectively. The data revealed that employment impacts are highest in countries with higher economic growth such as the Philippines, Guatemala, and India.

The success that Compassion International has had on completion in education and entry into the labor force have broad implications for American policy, suggesting that psychological and social development should be more seriously considered in current education policy. It is common wisdom that children need motivation to succeed. The sponsorships offered through Compassion show that building up self-motivation is just as important as eliminating external barriers to success. Further research that yields results on sponsorships that focus on internal motivation versus those that only provide financial support is necessary in considering how much to invest in the psychological development aspect of education policy.

Article Source: Does International Child Sponsorship Work? A Six-Country Study of Impacts on Adult Life Outcomes, Bruce Wydick, Paul Glewwe, and Laine Rutledge, Journal of Political Economy, Volume 121, Issue 2, April 2013, Pages 393–436.

Feature Photo: cc/(Jan Varchola)