Cash transfers as a response to COVID-19: Experimental evidence from Kenya

The Effects of Emergency Government Cash Transfers on Beliefs and Behaviours During the COVID Pandemic: Evidence from Brazil

“…In row 6, we consider number of working hours per week including unemployed in the sample (inputting zeros for their working hours), indicating an impact of reducing number of hours in a similar magnitude. 17 These labour market e¤ects are consistent with the large increase in inactivity in Brazil documented by Menezes-Filho et al ( 2021), that may have been speci…c to Brazil and exacerbated by AE. 18 It appears that the types of precautionary and social distancing behaviour that did not entail loss of income were being widely adopted regardless of AE eligibility, explaining the contrast of null impacts in rows [1]- [3] to rows [4]- [6].…”

Trust, social protection, and compliance: Moral hazard in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Yet this would likely have affected the impact of the wealth and education variables, whose magnitudes and significance remained consistent throughout. Furthermore, some evidence from impact evaluations of emergency transfers suggest that transfers may have increased mobility by increasing the economic activity of recipients ( Bird et al, 2023 ; Brooks et al, 2020 ). Unfortunately, data limitations do not allow further testing of these hypotheses.…”

“…We argue that our results are grounded in the Latin America's “inclusionary turn” ( Kapiszewski et al, 2021 ), in which the region became a global pioneer in cash transfer programs both before and during the pandemic, although it remains an open question whether the generous nature of Latin America's social protection programs may have unintentionally spurred increased mobility or contributed to it, given that the region registered the globe's highest per capita case and mortality rates ( Ritchie and Ortiz-Ospina, 2021 ). Despite some cross-country evidence of the effects of income supports on decreased mobility ( Aminjonov et al, 2021 ), more focused randomized evaluations of the impact of emergency cash transfers in Peru ( Bird et al, 2023 ) and Kenya ( Brooks et al, 2020 ) in the first months of the pandemic suggest that support may have also stimulated small business activity and thus could have made recipient households more mobile and vulnerable to contagion and death.…”

Learning Inequalities During COVID-19: Evidence from Longitudinal Surveys from Sub-Saharan Africa

“…11 Cash transfers during the pandemic are also observed to increase food expenditure in Ghana and Kenya (Brooks et al, 2022;Karlan et al, 2022).…”