Let’s begin with a fundamental question: do cash transfers generate “productive” effects? Correa et review the evidence for three design variants (cash only, cash-plus and “graduation” packages) and four main outcomes in Africa. Such outcomes include: (a) productive assets, where effects on livestock ownership were of 0.2 standard deviations (and slightly larger for cash plus and graduation programs relative to stand-alone cash); (b) agricultural inputs and farm management techniques (for which evidence is more limited by generally positive, e.g., Ethiopia and Malawi); (c) off-farm and non-farm activities (where several studies indicate a shift from low-value casual labor and to more productive household activities, e.g., Zambia and Tanzania); and (d) effects on income are of 0.23 standard deviations (with no statistically significant difference between cash transfer design variants, see figure above based on 17 studies). What about costs-effectiveness? Overall, the evidence is “… generally very favorable, irrespective of the methodology chosen and the varying assumptions made by the researchers” (h/t Silvio Daidone).
And here is an even more crucial query: can cash transfers save lives? Based on a cohort study of 4882 municipalities in Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico over 20 years (2000-2019), Cavalcanti et al show that conditional cash transfers coverage led to a reduction in children mortality by 24% — put differently, CCTs prevented 738,919 deaths among children under 5 years of age. A strongest association between coverage and mortality was found with malnutrition and HIV/AIDS, and lower association with respiratory infections, tuberculosis, and malaria. Forecast modeling suggested that CCT expansion during economic crises could prevent more than 150,000 child deaths in the three countries by 2030.
More from the region: a fascinating volume edited by Garcia et al provide a tour of debates and options on income support in Latin America and the Caribbean. So much to cover… so let me just single out a few points I found quite interesting – e.g., Robles and Garcia call for the “institutionalization of an emergency income protection mechanism” (p.92) for at least the population living in poverty and that is activated during shocks (they also argue for better coordination of non-contributory and contributory arms of the system); De Wispelaere and Farias have a handy overview of pros and cons of universal basic income (p.19-24); while the chapter by Espindola estimates that a monthly UBI equivalent to the poverty line would cost 19.2% of GDP annually, while limiting such scheme to children and adolescents would claim 5.3% of GDP. A Spanish version is also available! (h/t Jurgen De Wispelaere).
Since I mentioned contributory schemes, a paper by Alfers and Juergens-Grant on post-Covid social protection for informal workers notes that social insurance “… receives relatively little attention in comparison to the much-discussed questions of social assistance” (p.7). The paper also points out that for those in informal employment, “… it is unrealistic and unfair to assume that individual savings will provide adequate protections” (p.8). In examining developments around universality, digitization and participation, the authors discuss differences between international approaches (largely focusing on ILO vs World Bank); they argue that universality could only be achieved by securing financing “from those who profit from the work of informal workers” (like India’s Building and Other Construction Workers Board which levies a 1% tax on the building industry to finance benefits, p.9); and call for identifying “infrastructures of inclusion” built on progressive terms (as opposed to “adverse incorporation”, p.15).
From ideas to practice… with Oman’s sweeping social protection reforms! These include the integration of 11 pension funds into one single national pensions scheme. Plus… the country established a cash benefit for all children under the age of 18, a universal old age pension for senior citizens over the age of 60, and a universal disability allowance, a social insurance scheme for maternity and paternity, and sickness cash benefits (h/t Luca Pellerano).
News on resilience: “anticipatory” cash transfers are receiving lots of (well deserved) attention, but do they always work better than more traditional emergency assistance? A paper by Balana et al presents fresh evidence from Nigeria: it finds positive results from lump sum transfers provided before floods (e.g., on dimensions like resilience and assets). However, they also illustrate that not all ex-ante action is better than ex-post, e.g., on short-term food consumption.
Moving to Asia, Biswas et al evaluate the Dhanlakshmi scheme, an Indian conditional cash transfer program that encouraged girl births without restricting fertility. Operational between 2008 and 2013, Dhanlakshmi provided cash payments for giving birth to a girl, immunizing her, enrolling her in school and deferring her marriage until age 18 (the scheme did not impose any limits on family size or the number of beneficiaries, and the only eligibility criterion was local residency). The evaluation focused on Punjab and reveal that the intervention increased the probability of a girl birth by 5.5 percentage points, while raising the likelihood of any birth by only 0.85 percentage points.
But that’s not all! An article by Narayanan et al investigates whether social protection is improving health and nutrition in India. It found that participation in both NREGA and PDS reduces women’s morbidity by at least 25% (0.26-0.58 days), but their body mass index increases only in states “implementing those programs well”.
Bonus on malnutrition: the new SOFI report by FAO et al show that undernourishment affects 735 million people globally, a level somewhat similar to that of about three decades ago (i.e., 790 million in 1995). (BTW, according to my back of the envelop calculations, progress on reducing $1.9/day extreme poverty, or roughly 40M people/year, was 20 times that on hunger, i.e., about 2 million/year.) And BTW, Hamadeh et al have a blog discussing the newly released WBG country income classifications (spoiler: the LIC category is becoming slimmer and slimmer).
Finally, enjoy a seminar on Financing Adaptive Social Protection for Drought in Malawi (July 25th); another one by Kluve and Lall exploring “How Can Evaluation Data Enhance Development Research and Practice” (July 27th at 9am EST, h/t Jonathan Stöterau); and still on the 27th, check out the event on humanitarian-social protection links in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Weekly links will be back in August, happy summer everyone!