It’s not a quantitative evaluation, nor a systematic review: yet, by laying out a powerful logic some papers can offer novel ways of framing social protection. Reinhart’s new “money as medicine” article is one such case. He basically calls for a new narrative that emphasizes the societal benefits of cash transfers beyond impacts on beneficiaries, and the failure to recognize such foundational role may cause their underuse (alongside a dearth of holistic evaluations capturing society-wide effects). By examining the expanded Child Tax Credit in the US, the author argues that even if expensive, when large-scale and designed to prevent people to fall into poverty (instead of only supporting them after they fell), cash transfers can generate cost savings, e.g., via less violence, fewer emergency hospitalizations, etc. In his words, “cash-transfer programs should therefore not be viewed as charity for the poor, but should be regarded, codified, and funded as essential public health and safety infrastructure”.

Now take a guess: which social protection program reaches nearly 420 million children worldwide at a cost of $48 billion? Bundy et al offer a refresher on school meal programs: their paper, coauthored by yours truly, traces the evolution of school meals programs globally, examines the empirical evidence underpinning them (see table 4.1, p.16 for a summary), reviews select implementation practices with an emphasis on South Asia, and provides one of the first estimates of World Bank’s investments in school meals (spoiler: $282 million over the past 15 years).

Remember the Finnish basic income pilot of 2017-18? A paper by Simanainen found that the trial had a negative effect on fertility, that is, it reduced the probability of giving birth during the two-year experiment by 62.7% Because women beneficiaries were low-income, the paper argues that opportunity costs for childbearing were high even in the presence of cash incentives. However, a further decomposition of results reveals that the pilot had a positive fertility effect among women whose spouses received the transfer (the birth probability increased by 39.3%) since the program offset the costs of having a child. Bonus: the same author found in another article that the trial “had no detectable effect on the overall use of dental care services”.

BTW, speaking of basic income pilots, an open-access book by Laenen investigates the popularity of basic income by exploring the polls; but hey, ten US states just banned further tests, an act that a piece by Bogle considers undermining American values.

More from Europe, where a paper by Robayo-Abril and Cabrera applies the CEQ framework to Bulgaria’s tax-benefit system. The analysis shows that redistributive effects are comparatively modest (especially in terms of child poverty, which is reduced by just 0.3 percentage points). Yet the country does much better on inequality reduction, see for instance annex 2, p.56-57, for an international benchmarking.

Africa! Bidzha et al evaluate the impact of unconditional cash transfers (Child Support Grant providing $24/month) on child mortality in South Africa. Using provincial data between 2001 to 2019, they present two key findings, namely (i) a nonlinear relationship between cash transfers and child mortality, hence suggesting a role played by how cash recipients choose to use the grant, and (ii) cash transfers reduce mortality only after having reached a coverage threshold of about 81%.

Another paper from the region merges some of themes above, namely coverage and basic income: Nichelatti et al simulate the poverty and inequality effects of four universal basic income (UBI) schemes in Uganda and Zambia, i.e., converting the national social protection budget into a UBI, utilizing social protection spending equal to the regional average, and benefits equal to half and full international poverty line. Their analysis shows that in Zambia, which presents existing programs with relatively higher coverage, the least generous version of UBI leads to higher poverty compared to existing schemes (but the other versions reduce it, see discussion on p.10). Conversely, in Uganda, which displays a single significant social protection program, poverty and inequality would be reduced under any UBI scenario. What about costs? For financing the more generous UBI scenario, Uganda and Zambia would need a 214% and 106% increase in tax revenues, respectively.

A perk on poverty: here is a World Bank online compilation of datasheets with country-by-country analysis and projections for MENA!

What’s happening in Latin America? A paper by Wolf et al assessed the economic impacts of a skill upgrading program via professionalization courses for Bolsa Família beneficiaries in Brazil. Their general equilibrium model predicts an associated increase in human capital that “positively impacts society as a whole and the beneficiaries of a cash transfer program, allowing them to exit the program.

News on climate? ADB has two recommendations on disaster-responsive social protection in ASEAN countries, including piloting an Integrated Community Based Disaster Risk Management approach and creating an enabling environment for such approach. And a blog by Bharadwaj et al calls for “universal and adequate social protection as a cornerstone of their climate adaptation strategies”.

Since I mentioned disasters, FSIN and GNAFC issued the eighth edition of the flagship Global Report on Food Crises. It’s an incredibly rich resource filled with facts – and its crisp layout makes it highly digestible and user-friendly. Key highlights? In 2023, 281.6 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 59 food-crisis countries/territories (see map 1.1, p.6); the number of forcibly displaced people reached 90 million; and take a guess: which driver generated more food insecurity, extreme weather events or economic shocks? Well, the latter… 75 vs 72 million people affected (see figure 1.9, p.13). Bonus: ODI’s Think Change podcasts features five guests discussing “the politics of hunger – can famine in Gaza and Sudan be stopped? (where de Waal calls for cash-type assistance in Sudan and in-kind therapeutic foods in Gaza).

A turbo compilation: the STAAR Facility pulled together some really cool visuals explaining social protection, gender and crisis-responsiveness (I loved the animation connecting social protection and humanitarian systems!) (h/t Deanna Kotecha); a WIEGO podcast with Paz tackles registration challenges for domestic workers In Latin America while another one by socialprotection.org discusses the evolution of social protection in the Pacific; “… it is time to move on from the Transformative Social Protection framework that has dominated the last two decades”, argues a new note by Freeland; an “easy read” (in terms of format) is provided by Inclusion International’s note on “addressing disability related extra costs in social protection” (check out also the other three papers of the series); and the Development Intelligence Lab asked three specialists “what’s the secret to a successful donor-implementer relationship?”

… eveeeents!!! Watch the recordings of the webinar “Towards Gender-Responsive and Disability-inclusive Social Protection Systems in Africa”, while the big launch of the “Playbook on Dynamic Inclusion and Interoperability: Building Digital Social Protection Delivery Systems” is coming up on May 9.