Improving Lives Through Cash Transfers
Evidence demonstrates that cash transfer programs, growing around the globe since the mid-1990s, are a cost-effective way to improve the lives of poor households across many domains.
These programs can impact a wide range of development outcomes because recipients purchase food, invest in agriculture, improve their shelter, and pay for medical and education expenses. Cash transfers address poor households’ severe budget constraints and investment needs ranging across education, health, household, and business.
Cash transfer programs come in a myriad of designs that vary by conditionality, targeted population, size of grant, frequency of grant, and length of the program. They are one of the most studied development programs today with much evidence demonstrating their success, yet there remain questions about how variations in programs can affect their impact. Does adding resources or services to the cash transfers maximize their benefits? How can they be adapted for use in refugee camps or with migrant populations?
AIR is proud to be among the forefront of generating rigorous evidence on the latest cash transfer programs, helping stakeholders and policymakers learn how, when, and why these programs generate the desired effects. Our mixed methods impact and performance evaluations span continents, cover many domains, investigate different beneficiary populations, and evaluate a range of payment modalities, transfer sizes, and program lengths.
Learn more about these programs and the studies:
Democratic Republic of Congo
Alternative Responses for Communities in Crisis (ARCC) II Program in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Mixed Method Evaluation)
Existing evidence about cash transfers indicates that providing cash in humanitarian crises may be an efficient way of helping people and stimulating markets. In order to help fill the evidence gap on cash transfers in humanitarian settings, AIR researchers compiled and analyzed data and lessons learned from the ARCC II program in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to examine 1) whether cash-based interventions contributed to the program’s overall objective of improved well-being and reduced vulnerability for children and households in humanitarian and transition settings; 2) if program beneficiaries had increased access to essential goods and services and livelihood opportunities; and 3) what the program's effects were on a broad scope of indicators reflecting well-being and food, material, and financial vulnerability.
Cash transfers are international development programs where donors or governments can give cash directly to targeted groups. In this video, David Seidenfeld dispels the myth that such programs create dependency and are a waste of money.
A quick look at Zambia's Cash Transfer Program by the numbers.
The Multiple Category Transfer Grant program in Zambia provides grants directly to poor, labor constrained households, empowering families to decide how best to meet their needs. In addition to eating more meals and being more food secure, results show families receiving the grants are improving their housing conditions, buying more livestock, buying necessities for children, reducing their debt, and investing in productive activities.
Zambia’s Child Grant cash transfer program provides grants directly to poor households with children under five years old, empowering families to decide how best to meet their needs. AIR conducted an evaluation and found gains greater than the value of the transfer size itself. Our researchers also explored how the program affected women's empowerment.
A majority of Zimbabweans lack sufficient resources to provide nutritional meals, access to health care, school supplies, and clothing to their family on a regular basis. The HSCT focused on strengthening the household economy through the delivery of cash transfers in the form of a monthly stipend to households. AIR conducted an impact evaluation of this cash transfer program implemented in 3,000 households in Zimbabwe. Overall results were encouraging, given the brief 12-month period evaluated: the HSCT contributed to improving consumption and food security among smaller households, and improved resiliency through debt reduction, increased livestock holdings, and reductions in exposure to shocks.
While social cash transfer programs have been piloted for a number of years in Malawi, they have only recently become more widely implemented. UNICEF Malawi is working with AIR to conduct a process evaluation of the Malawi SCT program, the objective of which is to help reinforce accountability, contribute to results-based management, and continuously drive service and implementation improvements by offering recommendations to improve operations and build skills.
Lebanon has one of the highest per-capita ratios of registered refugees in the world. Out of a population of 5.9 million, 1.5 million are displaced Syrians. Most Syrians arrived with limited savings and have struggled to earn steady incomes to meet their families’ basic needs, such as food, healthcare, and shelter. These basic needs tend to require immediate attention, which means that Syrian families often forgo education and its long-term benefits in favor of short-term needs. In 2016 the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in partnership with the United Nations World Food Program, started piloting an education-based cash transfer program designed to lower or remove barriers to primary school aged Syrian children’s school attendance, including financial barriers and reliance on child labor.
UNICEF Cash Transfer for Promoting Secondary School in Madagascar (Impact Evaluation)
The socioeconomic situation in Madagascar has deteriorated over the past decade. Children in Madagascar face direct consequences of this poverty. About 47 percent of children are chronically malnourished, 28 percent are engaged in child labor, and less than 40 percent of children complete primary school. Many children drop out of school before transitioning from one level of school to another. About 79 percent of children attend primary school, whereas school attendance drops to only 27 percent for secondary school. The Let Us Learn supplementary cash transfer augments the Monetary Transfer for Human Development to promote children’s transition to and continued enrolment in secondary school.