WSPLs Oct 9 – The effects of cash transfers on child labor and schooling in Ethiopia; tips for connecting social protection and GBV; the performance of admin vs survey-based targeting in Lebanon; cash for homeless populations in Canada; social protection and food security in Southern Africa; social protection and covid-19 response in East Asia and Pacific; the scars of war in El Salvador; visualizing UBI research and looking at UBI as a disappointment; reflections on Covid financing; digitalizing in-kind supply chains in India; the costs and benefits of lockdowns, and constraints to their enforcement in urban Ghana and South Africa. And much, much more…

Let me start this week with a somewhat cautionary tale about providing transfers at very low levels. Prifti et al study the effects of the Social Cash Transfer program in Tigray, Ethiopia, on children’s labor and school attendance. What did they find? In rural areas, the transfer led to a small effect on child labor (half an hour reduction), a result primarily driven by reductions in farm work by younger boys (5–14 years old) living in male‐headed households; but school attendance didn’t increase, partially because of the low transfer amounting to 10% of monthly consumption expenditure (which also wasn’t adjusted to inflation). In the urban areas, similar (no) effects are observed on schooling, while the program rose the total number of hours worked by children (it is possible that mothers used the transfer to pursue productive opportunities, with caring responsibilities passed on to their daughters).

Speaking of mothers, Quarterman and Peterman lay out a 18-point checklist to better integrate social protection with gender based violence (GBV) during Covid-19. These include some very practical steps, such as conducting GBV risk analysis; implement police record and reference checks staff in direct contact with recipients; ensure gender balance of program staff; put in place complaints or grievance reporting system as well as whistleblowing protections; expand benefits to and prioritize enrolment of violence survivors; and many other great tips!

From violence to forced displacement: what do we know about targeting in humanitarian contexts? A paper by Altindag et al shows that in Lebanon, an econometric targeting model for unconditional cash transfers for refugees based on limited information captured by typical administrative records performs approximately as well as a PMT method requiring a survey of the entire potentially eligible population. While administrative data doesn’t include information on assets, survey-based PMT yields reductions in inclusion and exclusion error only up to 2 percentage points. The authors also estimate that a PMT data collection survey would cost around $5 million, an amount that if redirected to the program would allow the inclusion of an additional 2,300 households. Bonus: UNHCR and WBG have a great synthesis of 11 titles on forced displacement matters.

Let me move to another form of displacement: what happens when providing cash transfers to homeless populations? In Vancouver, the New Leaf project provided 50 randomly selected individuals with a one-time cash transfer of $7,500. The evaluation by the Foundations for Social Change shows that cash recipients spent 4,396 fewer nights homeless over a year; there was a 39% decrease in alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs spending, and a $8,172 increase in savings; and significant gains in food security.

Since I mentioned food security… why does the theme matter in social protection responses in Southern Africa? A brief by WFP and EPRI unbundle the question and review the issues for nutrition programs, school feeding and public works in the region. BTW, congrats to WFP for the Nobel Prize for Peace!

From specific programs to a scheme that theoretically reaches everyone: what’s new in UBI? Stanford’s Basic Income Lab launched a new tool helps visualizing UBI-related research, while Freeland lines up the multiple criteria for a UBI and then rules it out as “a big disappointment” (the title is harsher than the text).

Speaking of visuals… a video by MicroSave illustrates how India didn’t just digitize the delivery of cash transfers, but also the supply chains of food, fuel and fertilizers (h/t Anit Mukherjee).

A poker of flagships!! The Reversals of Fortune report shows that in 2020, between 88-115 million people worldwide will be pushed into poverty largely because of the pandemic. And the East Asia and Pacific Economic Update estimates that the number of people living in poverty in the region will grow by 38 million – here check out p.43-45 for a synopsis on social protection measures, with a longer background paper on the matter by Mason et al being out soon. The October edition of the IMF Fiscal Monitor shows that in advanced economies, recent growth in public investment spending was over 3 times higher than elsewhere – i.e., mean of 7% versus 2% (see figure 2.3). Based on their work for the October edition of the World Economic Outlook, a blog by Grigoli and Sandri look at the costs and benefits of lockdowns, concluding that “… medium-term gains may offset the short-term costs of lockdowns, possibly leading to positive overall effects on the economy”.

From lockdowns to health! In line with earlier work by Brown and Ravallion as well as others, it’s clear that structural deficiencies in urban areas make them vectors for the pandemic. New surveys from urban Ghana and South Africa by Durizzo et al reveal that “… lack of cooperation with governmental [Covid-19] regulations seems to be more related to a lack of infrastructure or poverty rather than unwillingness to engage in behavioral change”. Blanchet et al present a list of 120 essential non-COVID-19 health interventions that were adapted from the model health benefit packages developed by the Disease Control Priorities project (h/t Amanda Glassman). And The Atlantic has an interesting piece on Covid-19 overdispersion and backward testing (h/t Martin Ravallion).

But let’s step back and join Hill et al in their exploration of lessons from 6 months of tracking covid-19 funding. In a nice compilation of facts and figures, they argue that “we don’t just need more money, we need a different approach”. And guess which instrument was able to disburse to governments already in April? Catastrophe-contingent financing instruments put in place in advance of the crisis. The full data can be downloaded here.

From the last 6 month to the past 30 years: in El Salvador, Acosta et al show that people born in highly violent areas during the civil war of 1980-92 saw a reduction in their probability of being employed by 6 percentage points, and of getting a high-skilled job by 5pp three decades after it happened.

Final fireworks: FAO is hiring a Senior Social Policy Officer (Social Protection), P-5 and a Deputy Director, Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equity Division, D-1 (h/t Ben Davis); Wistar has an interesting essay on “mainstreaming Modern Monetary Theory” (“now is precisely the wrong time to cling to abstract notions about what the capitalist state can and cannot do”); and a big welcome to a new source of social protection knowledge: IPA’s Strohm and Mosenkis launched a new social protection roundup as part of the RECOVR research hub!