What about starting with this insight from Kenya: “[a]dapting the design of cash transfers to the decision-making environment of recipients has the potential to improve their financial choices and outcomes”. Kansikas et al assess preferences for payment frequency among beneficiaries of GiveDirectly-sponsored cash transfers. Three surprising findings emerge: first, contrary to conventional assumptions that people prefer a steady income stream to smooth consumption, the authors found that over 98% of beneficiaries opted to receive transfers in one (35.6%) or two (62.6%) installments (only 0.4% favored twelve monthly payments). Perhaps more strikingly, almost one-third of participants (27%) preferred at least some delay in transfers (about a month). This is because the delay would allow to plan the use of cash and align transfer timing to other agricultural activities. And deferral paid off: among those that preferred waiting for transfers a little longer, annualized earnings increased by $53, or 5% of the total transfer amount.

Bonus on Kenya: a study by Ali and Mwaura found that cash transfers by Islamic Relief in the Garissa County were utilized by women to improve the quality of housing and this positively affected women empowerment. Double-bonus: check out the study by Kihianyu and Moi on the effects of cash transfers on the livelihood of the elderly in Njoro Sub County.

More on Africa: “adaptive” social protection systems are needed, but how to measure the level of adaptiveness? A World Bank report presents a four-country assessment of systems in Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, and South Africa. Building on recent tools, a “traffic light” scorecard (with levels including “nascent”, “emerging”, and “established”, see annex p.143) is applied to each four “adaptive” building blocks, namely institutional arrangements and partnerships, programs and their delivery systems, data and information systems, and finance. Overall, the agenda is “… at a formative stage of development in southern Africa” while specific recommendations accompanying individual blocks and countries.

An extra one on South Africa: Trafford and Swartz offer reflections from interviews with doctors at three Cape Town public hospitals charged with conducting eligibility assessments for the country’s childhood disability “Care Dependency Grant”. The emerging narratives point to challenges associated with navigating complex administrative forms by those doctors, and their balancing act as they fulfil caring responsibilities while complying with bureaucratic processes in a context of strained public resources.

From disability to nutrition: what works best for stunting, wasting and underweight? A new systematic review by McWay et al found that among 39 early childhood interventions, “… nutrition or cash transfers outperform interventions offering information based support or growth monitoring”. In particular, the authors observe that combining two or more measures can bolster impacts on child growth: “… [i]ntegrating nutrient supplements and cash incentives while delivering these interventions can lead to long lasting impacts in child development. Thus, policymakers should emphasize the delivery of nutrition and cash incentives while delivering behavioral change interventions to improve child growth and development”. Check out figure 3-7 (p.25-29) for disaggregated effects by intervention and overall meta estimations.

But combing interventions doesn’t always generate impact, even with sizable investment and diligent implementation: that’s the bottom line of a new study by Baird et al on a generous multifaced “graduation” program in Tanzania. Housed by TASAF, the program involves groups of about 15 individuals ironing out a business plan and receiving capital for nearly $6,500 to implement it. The interesting aspect of the study is that while the classic combo of assets, entrepreneurial training (2-3 days), and cash transfers ($50-$350) are provided, each component is randomized hence enabling to establish their individual effects. Results up to 36 months after the program show that “… none of the interventions (…), and indeed no combination of them, proves to have a strong effect on beneficiary welfare even in the short term”. Three reasons stand out: the targeting of vulnerable individuals was justified as a welfare goal, but may have not been compatible with an entrepreneurial objective; most beneficiaries were already operating in the proposed sectors (which had no barriers to entry); and group investments require well-established rules over co-investment and profit sharing, which wasn’t always the case under the program. BTW, interesting to note of cash transfers were provided to individuals, but these were entirely reinvested in the group business plan.

Let’s move to MENA with good, mixed, and sobering news from Egypt: El Enbaby et al issued the quantitative, second-round evaluation of Takaful cash transfers. What did they find? Here is the good news: there are large effects on household assets (tractors, plows, and livestock); beneficiaries reduced debt levels; children’s enrollment to primary and preparatory school increased by 9 and 21 percentage points, respectively (plus increased girls’ secondary school participation). The mixed outcomes: while wasting declined among children 6-23 months of age, mothers’ anthropometrics didn’t improve and household dietary diversity went down (and families consuming less grains, eggs, oils and fats, and fruits). Also, there are no effects on mental health and women’s ability to make decisions within their families. Here is the more sobering part: there are no impacts on poverty; there is “… some suggestive evidence that Takaful induced increases in number of children born in the past 5 years”; and “… beneficiaries are significantly more likely to be employed in the informal sector”.

Taking a wider regional perspective, what do people want from social contracts in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia? An article by Loewe and Albrecht uses a framework for “provision” of human development services and employment support, “protection” from physical harm and “political participation”. Findings from a phone survey of about 2,500 respondents show that people expect governments to deliver all three functions (“… even if this costs a price”), but when asked to prioritize, “provision” outweighs “protection”, followed by “participation”.

What about Jordan? An article by Lyles et al examines WFP’s “Choice” program providing “multi-purpose cash” ($21-$32/person/month) to about 292,000 Syrian refugees in the country. Their study found that the scheme “… improved care-seeking for child illness, reduced hospitalizations for adult acute illness, and lowered rates of borrowing to pay for health expenditures”. However, the program didn’t affect dimensions such as chronic health conditions.

Speaking of health, a new paper by Amorim et al on Alaska’s annual universal cash transfers found that payments “… increase the probability of initiating breastfeeding when they are received in the month of birth, and of continuing to breastfeed when they are received immediately after birth”. BTW, Glassner et al claim that the Child Tax Credit had no effect welfare and mental health of parents.

From the US to Scotland: the Scottish government committed to reduce the child poverty rate from 25% to 10% by 2030/31. As part of such vision, the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) was introduced as a top-up to existing schemes (like Universal Credit) and providing a cash transfer to households at a fixed rate per eligible child (£25/week). A paper by Congreve et al shows that relying on such program would make child poverty reduction attainable, it raises other fiscal and political barrier suggesting a combo of the SCP, targeted cash transfers and other policies such as childcare.

Turning to LAC, there is a less-known variant of the classic “Bolsa” program in Brazil. Cisneros et al estimate that the Bolsa Floresta program, a conditional cash transfer operating in the Amazonas, decreases yearly forest losses by about 10% in protected areas. That’s about 856 ha of avoided deforestation in absolute terms.

From ex-post to ex-ante evaluations: is there a way we can somewhat predict the expected outcomes of a program based on results elsewhere? By analyzing cash transfer experiments in Malawi and Morocco, Maeba argues that there is scope for extrapolating, modeling and predicting effects across different contexts. In particular, the paper’s model estimates that based on a reduced form of the Malawi program, the Moroccan CCT increased enrollment rates by 5.7 percentage points from a base of 89.4 pp.

And from qualitative to qualitative studies: in the Philippines, Araos et al conducted focus group discussions with Pantawid cash transfer beneficiaries in 16 villages. A range of interesting insights emerged, for example in terms of explaining different attendance of pre and post-natal healthcare facilities (the latter not tied to conditionalities, see p.78). One dimension that struck me relates to a huge issue (“dependency”) and how that was lucidly addressed: “… beneficiaries are aware of the criticism from nonbeneficiaries and politicians that they are dependent on cash grants, and they disagree with this characterization. Households cannot rely on the grants as their only source of income because the amount is insufficient. Thus, they still need to work to fulfill their households needs” (see p.86). (They also added that “beneficiaries are aware that the grant is meant for children’s education and health expenses”, raising an interesting question on labeling”).

I mentioned a couple of times gender empowerment issues, but let’s look at more news on the theme: in reflecting on economic security and violence against women and children, Peterman and Ranganathan offer a great resource roundup covering a range of materials – including handy slides! – on issues related to cash transfers “plus”, livelihoods, humanitarian assistance, costing and other key gender themes.

Let me round this edition up by switching from violence to crises: Humanitarian Outcomes has an interesting, thought-provoking report on the humanitarian response to Pakistan’s devastating floods. Among the issues tackled, it notes that “… [t]he case of Pakistan (like Ukraine and Sri Lanka) has raised questions for the international humanitarian system about how it responds in middle-income countries that have substantial government, civil society, and disaster management capacity (…) Financing systems, ways of working, and contingency planning need to be more geared to more direct, faster support to local and national actors”.

 

Ugo Gentilini is from the World Bank’s Social Protection & Jobs global practice. The Social Protection Links newsletter, issued every Friday, distills and discusses a selection of curated resources on the topic, from academic articles to podcasts. The blog is republished on socialprotection.org each week, offering knowledge on social protection to help you stay on top of it — succinctly, regularly and frequently. Previous editions can be found here. 

To sign up to the newsletter or share materials, you can contact Ugo by email ([email protected]), Twitter (@ugentilini) or LinkedIn.

Social Protection Programmes: 
  • Social assistance
    • Social transfers
      • Cash transfers
        • Conditional cash transfers
        • Unconditional cash transfers
      • In kind transfers
        • Nutritional programmes
  • Labour market / employment programmes
    • Active labour market programmes / Productive inclusion
      • Entrepreneurship / Start-up incentives
      • Job training
Social Protection Building Blocks: 
  • Policy
    • Coverage
    • Expenditure and financing
    • Governance and coordination
  • Programme design
    • Benefits design
    • Eligibility criteria
    • Targeting
  • Programme implementation
    • Benefits payment / delivery
    • Enrolment / registration
    • Informations Systems (MIS, Social Registry, Integrated Registry)
  • Programme performance / impact analysis
Social Protection Approaches: 
  • Adaptive social protection
  • Child-sensitive social protection
  • Gender-sensitive social protection
  • Programme graduation
  • Shock-responsive social protection
  • Social protection systems
Cross-Cutting Areas: 
  • Child Protection
  • Climate change
  • Consumption and expenditure
  • Disaster risk management / reduction
  • Education
  • Food and nutritional security
  • Gender
    • Gender-based violence
    • Women's empowerment
  • Health
    • Child health
  • Human capital
  • Humanitarian assistance
  • Inclusive growth
  • Inequalities
  • Labour market / employment
  • Microfinance
  • Poverty reduction
  • Productive / Economic inclusion
  • Resilience
Countries: 
  • Botswana
  • Egypt
  • Kenya
  • Lesotho
  • Malawi
  • Morocco
  • South Africa
  • Eswatini
  • Tanzania
  • Tunisia
  • Brazil
  • United States
  • Jordan
  • Lebanon
  • Philippines
  • Syria
  • United Kingdom
The views presented here are the author's and not socialprotection.org's