Rolling Back Progresa: School and Work After the End of a Landmark Anti-Poverty Program

Mexico’s pioneering conditional cash transfer program Progresa, later renamed Prospera, operated over two decades in a shifting policy landscape. We exploit the program's sudden and unexpected rollback to estimate whether, two decades after rollout studies documented its initial impacts on schooling and labor, the program still raised enrollment and reduced work in youth. Comparing areas with high and low program penetration before and after rollback, we find that rollback immediately reduced school enrollment, especially in boys of high school age. Effects on enrollment were larger at rollback than they were at rollout, albeit shifted from middle school ages to high school ages. Rising work mirrored falling enrollment in boys of high school age. Our results suggest the program had successfully adapted to the rise of high school, but Mexico's poor were unable to protect their children from its unexpected demise.