cash transfers

A study of Indonesia's Kartu Prakerja programme finds that on-demand cash and training assistance can significantly boost self-employment and income among those who genuinely receive it. However, the programme's flexible online design enabled third-p...

An experiment in Nairobi's informal settlements found that parents usually made child-nutrition decisions cooperatively, and that fathers were at least as willing as mothers to allocate resources to their children's meals – challenging the case for u...

A randomised evaluation of a cash and psychological intervention in Ethiopia shows that the joint intervention is needed to improve both mental health and economic outcomes, but the effectiveness of the combined intervention is attenuated by active c...

Is it nuts to give cash to the poor without strings attached?

A large-scale conditional cash transfer programme in Chile increased earnings, reduced ethnic inequality, and improved children’s learning outcomes across two generations.

Adding home visits to a social safety net programme providing cash transfers and parenting information led to sustained improvements in child development, health behaviours, and education outcomes in Burkina Faso, whereas cash alone produced fewer la...

Disaster relief can discourage people from adapting to future disasters – for example, by reducing incentives to relocate. But in low-income settings, cash relief can also ease liquidity constraints and enable adaptation. Evidence from Pakistan’s 201...

Digital cash transfers can be delivered even in active conflict settings like Sudan and can significantly protect vulnerable households – especially in the most insecure areas – from worsening food insecurity, though their impacts vary by context and...

Decades of evidence from Mexico and Brazil show that conditional cash transfers reduce poverty, improve education and employment, boost local economies, and yet can still be undone when policy ignores research.