Links Feb 9 – School meals provided to all children vs low-income only; taking stock of three categorical measures; CCTs in England; Bolsa’s effects on breast cancer in Brazil; BISP and social cohesion in ex-FATA areas in Pakistan; pandemic leakages in food assistance program sin Bangladesh; two papers on poverty in Africa; a collection of 8 gender papers on social protection; a systematic review on the double burden of malnutrition…

Let’s begin with a paper on school meals! The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) in the US allows high-poverty schools to offer free meals to all students regardless of household income. Covering about 20 million children, CEP basically eliminates processes that distinguish between children receiving free or subsidized meals and those who pay full price. But what effects does such “universal” approach generate? Taking advantage of a gradual implementation across eligible schools in the Oregon state, an article by Domina et al detected a 10% decline in suspension probability in treated schools, and a further 22% drop among students in grades 9-12. Effects were particularly pronounced for low-income and Hispanic students. While the article couldn’t fully establish causality, it provides suggestive evidence that reduced suspensions were driven by “ameliorating the stigma associated with school meals in means-tested environments”.

Speaking of “universality”, Sibun and Seglah compile data from 52 low and middle income countries on three types of categorical benefits, namely social pensions, disability and child benefits. Overall, these include 87 programs (an 88th is the Iran’s quasi-UBI), 57 of which are “pure” or provided without means or other welfare-related tests. Costs? Huge variance, ranging from over 7% of GDP in Mauritius to tiny fractions of GDP (e.g., child benefits in Nepal). Bonus: a Global Child Benefits Tracker is now available online (see also the launch event on Feb 14) (h/t Ian Orton).

Did you know about conditional cash transfers in England? Introduced in 1999 and expanded nationally since 2004, the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) at its peak EMA covered half million children. An evaluation by Jiang found that, among the results, recipients are 16.3 percentage points more likely to participate in higher education than non-beneficiaries – and two year of EMA receipt is associated with 4.3 percentage points higher likelihood of obtaining a degree. Interestingly, the incremental lifetime earnings attributable to EMA amount to £16,272 per pupil (see p.17).

An amazing paper from Latin America! A medical study by Guimaraes et al analyzed data from 20 million Brazilian women and their participation in Bolsa cash transfers. It revealed that those living in the poorest municipalities (“highly segregated areas”) and who were not enrolled in Bolsa had a 24% higher risk of dying from breast cancer relative to a 13% higher risk for women living in the same areas but getting cash transfers (where the comparison with better off areas).

Let’s look at South Asia, where Nawaz and Hussain studied the impact of BISP cash transfers in Pakistan’s ex-FATA areas. They found that the program reduced material poverty and enhanced assets measures (see tables 3-5). However, BISP also deteriorated social cohesion due to the “potential for alienation among non-beneficiaries” as it “created resentment and tensions between people in the study area”.

BTW, in Bangladesh Chowdhury et al found that the COVID-19 version of the Food Friendly Program (providing households with 30kg of subsidizes rice/month at 20-30% the market price) (FFP) exhibited higher leakages than the pre-pandemic intervention – this included an estimated lost amount of BDT 4.6 billion. Bonus: in India, Chakrabarti et al simulate the effects on income mobility stemming from alternative benefit structures (NREGA vs UBI vs others).

Moving to Africa, there are two new papers on poverty in the region: one by Gascoigne et al quantifies the impact of drought on household consumption: based on historical weather conditions in eight countries, they found that poverty rates are 1-12% higher, depending on the country, under the worst weather conditions relative to the best conditions observed in the past 13 years. And another paper by Wu et al examines 575 comparable growth spells between 1981 and 2021, showing that Sub-Saharan Africa displayed lower growth elasticity of poverty relative to other regions over such period.

Gender! As part of the world survey on the role of women in development, UNWOMEN commissioned a range of background papers – these are now online, including on care as a fourth pillar of welfare and social protection systems (by Bango); financing social protection from a feminist perspective (Rodriguez Enriquez); integrating gender, income, employment and care in Latin America (Asenjo) as well as in West and Central Africa and globally (Barsoum); experiences of informal women workers’ solidarity organisations (Chatterjee); risks and benefits of digital tools for social protection delivery from a gender perspective (Faith), and targeting social assistance in Sri Lanka (Kadirgamar) (h/t Amber Peterman).

What about nutrition? Escher et al have a systematic review of 26 studies on the “double burden of malnutrition” – among the measures examined, “two studies of conditional cash transfers suggested DBM-beneficial effects in children, whereas one indicated potentially harmful effects on maternal overweight”.

Final assortment: Khayat urgently calls for universal social protection in Lebanon; in a VoxDev podcast, Limodio discusses mobile money markets and financial inclusion in Africa; and the Digital Convergence Initiative just released standards on the interoperability of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics and Social Protection Management Information Systems (h/t Lena Blind).

And big thanks to all those that took the short survey on the newsletter… and please take it if you haven’t yet! 😊

p.s. my travels may affect the links frequency over the next couple of weeks.