WSPLs March 12: Making social protection delivery and targeting more disability-sensitive; keep cash payments going during Covid in Turkey; several social protection resources from the US; plenty on cash transfers in humanitarian settings; effects of transfers on social cohesion in Malawi; public works reduce violence in El Salvador; the transmission of shocks from firms of consumers; and much, much more…

Barca et al produced a handy how-to guidance note capturing key steps for making social protection delivery systems more disability and gender sensitive. Among the many insights, I particularly enjoyed the 9 country examples of disability questions in social registry questionnaires (p.12), the 4 illustrations of disability registries (p.15), how to tailor the benefit packages to disability (p.20-21), and a similar set of tips for adapting information systems (30-32).

That’s not all: Sammon et al lay out several targeting options for reaching people with disabilities – see for instance a really nice set of 15 country practices on p.14-16.

How to maintain social protection provisions in turbulent times? Turkey shows the way: Little et al evaluate the performance of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) and Conditional Cash Transfers for Education (CCTE) programs during Covid-19. Systems were disrupted by the closure of public offices and the switch to online platforms, although payments were not interrupted. Bonus: check out Baez and Demirguc-Kunt’s reflections on the need for the country to urgently promote a more equal recovery.

Speaking of Covid, the new US relief package (ARPA) has obviously stirred a lot of attention on the US social protection system. A blog by Richardson et al locates the child benefits (CTC) temporary measures within the broader debate on universality and takes an optimistic stance that government institutions “… hope to subsequently make the underlying CTC expansion permanent” (after all, many temporary programs globally have become permanent indeed).

More locally, West et al found that the US Stockton basic income pilot – which reaches 125 people targeted geographically, but randomly selected individually – reduced income volatility, enabled recipients to find full-time employment, reduced depression and anxiety, and fostered self-determination and risk-taking. Further North, the small town of Skagway in Alaska converted federal (CARES Act) funding for municipalities into direct payments to its thousand residents: people received $1,000/month for 7 months with the condition that money should be spent locally (h/t Scott Santens). And why not – the US could learn lessons from Bangladesh (h/t Iffath Sharif).

Since I mentioned crises… there is a rich set of newly released resources from the humanitarian space! Raftree and Kondakhchyan produced an updated CaLP toolkit on data responsibility in humanitarian cash and vouchers operations; the same authors also have a dedicated paper arguing that sharing data with governments is important, but warn that “… data on religion, political affiliation, ethnicity, or other demographic data can also be used to harm individuals or groups”; Desmaris lay out a 3 step programming tool for incorporating cash into nutrition programming; and WFP issued new guidelines on Essential Needs Assessments and Minimum Expenditure Baskets (h/t Francesca De Ceglie).

Moving to Africa, a paper by Burchi and Roscioli finds that in Malawi, a package of lump-sum cash transfer and financial and business training improved social cohesion a year after treatment, while the lump sum alone did not (see table 2, p.12).

Let’s go to LAC, with two great resources on the jobs-violence nexus: Acosta and Monsalve Montiel found that the PATI public works program in EL Salvador reduced most types of crimes, including within a radius of 50 km from the intervention. Khanna et al found that in Colombia’s Medellin city, losing jobs leads to higher probability of crime for both the displaced worker and family members. Bonus on LAC: Mesa-Lago takes stock of four decades of pension privatization in the region.

Time for labor and skills resources (h/t Michael Weber): Martins studies a large training grants program in Portugal and finds significant positive effects on take up (training hours and expenditure) with limited deadweight. To what extent do firms pass through idiosyncratic shocks to their workers? Maibom and Majlund Vejlin show that in Denmark such passthrough to income is much higher for permanent (5-9%) than transitory (1%) shocks (income passthrough is higher for blue collar workers and workers in small firms).

Speaking of passing-through, Ashenfelter and Jurajda estimated that McDonald’s restaurants pass through the higher costs of minimum wage increases in the form of higher prices of the Big Mac sandwich (which implies an elasticity of prices with respect to minimum wages of about 0.14).

Final Asian fireworks! Chen and Pastore returns to education in China experienced a slight decrease in 2010-2015, but reverted back in 2017, while Alkire et al estimate that in the decade over 2005-2016, India halved its Multidimensional Poverty Index and over 270 million people exited poverty.

Have a great weekend!