Bolivia and the Program to Support Employment: an Impact Evaluation of its Conditional Cash Transfer Component

Abstract: The Bolivian Program to Support Employment provides subsidized training to the unemployed and helps comparatively untrained and inexperienced people improve their employability. Albeit this programme was discontinued in 2017, a second version is currently being implemented to continue its work. This impact evaluation assesses the impact of the PSE on employment, labor income and the quality of employment for adult Bolivians. Through a difference-in-differences methodology, it appears that the programme has a positive and significant impact on each of these three variables. Supplemental regressions are conducted and it appears that the impact of the PSE on the employment of several population categories follows labor market expectations. Furthermore the PSE also has a positive and significant impact on employment formality for its beneficiaries, an especially important issue in Bolivia, where 85 percent of all employment is in-formal. Even if there are important issues with the data used in this analysis, dampening the con-clusions, it is fairly safe to state that the PSE has fulfilled its goals and that its successor should not only continue this impact but also go further.