Marwa Ibrahim

Dissertation Chapters 

Unlocking Mobility: The Impact of Cash Transfers on Young Adults’ Life Transitions in Malawi

(with Sudhanshu Handa) Manuscript under review
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of a large-scale unconditional cash transfer program on youth mobility in Malawi, focusing on gender-specific patterns among young adults aged 19–27. Using experimental data, we assess whether relaxing liquidity constraints enables young people to relocate for marriage or independent household formation, thereby overcoming geographic poverty traps. For young women, the transfer increases the likelihood of longer-distance marriage migration, suggesting enhanced agency in partner selection and geographic reach, particularly in areas with weak social networks. Among young men, the program facilitates local household formation and increases marriage rates, especially at older ages, effectively allowing young men to delay their launch until they are better prepared. The results contribute to a growing literature on the long-term and gendered effects of social protection, with implications for how broad-based social protection contributes to youth outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Programmatic “Reward” Targeting in Term-Limited Regimes

Manuscript under review
Abstract: While it is well-documented that politicians use social programs to “recruit” voters before elections, less is known about “reward” targeting to past supporters in the absence of re-election incentives, especially when the executive is constitutionally term-limited. I argue that in systems with mandatory voting and non-consecutive terms, winning candidates strategically use programmatic benefits after the election to consolidate core supporters. I test this using Peru's 2011 term-limited election and the expansion of the cash transfer program, Juntos, aimed at low-income mothers. I find that districts with stronger core support were twice as likely to be enrolled in Juntos. Moreover, beneficiaries in these core districts were 37 percent more likely to be male household heads than targeted women, revealing that the reward mechanism operates through politically mediated eligibility exceptions. These findings reframe distributive politics by isolating the retrospective dimension and offer a crucial framework for analyzing the politicization of social policy in democracies constrained by term limits.

Educational Aspirations and Reservation Wages Among Young Adults in Rural Malawi

(with Sudhanshu Handa) Manuscript under review
Abstract: Using a nine-year panel of young people from rural Malawi we estimate the determinants of the reservation wage, the first study to examine this question in a low-income country, and one of the few studies from anywhere to focus on this age group. We find that women have lower reservation wages than men, and educational aspirations seven years earlier and educational expectations nine years earlier strongly predict the reservation wage. The effect of expectations is completely mediated through grade attainment, but the effect of aspirations persists. Household fixed effects which remove heterogeneity related to norms, preferences and behaviors by parents continue to show a significant relationship between aspirations and future reservation wage. The results suggest that the antecedents of labor market expectations can be traced back to schooling aspirations during adolescence. Interventions to address these can be promising for influencing labor market expectations and subsequent outcomes.