Myth-Busting? Confronting Six Common Perceptions about Unconditional Cash Transfers as a Poverty Reduction Strategy in Africa

Food insecurity and men’s perpetration of partner violence in a longitudinal cohort in South Africa

“…Little research has explored food insecurity or economic interventions among men, but pilot studies suggest these programmes may reduce IPV perpetration 49 50. Despite potential downsides if economic interventions reinforce traditional male roles, concerns that an influx of cash might actually increase violence perpetration (by, eg, increasing alcohol intake) have not been borne out in the literature 51…”

More evidence on the impact of government social protection in sub‐Saharan Africa: Ghana, Malawi, and Zimbabwe

“…All indicators are defined so that higher values are positive outcomes. Following our earlier work in Zambia reported in Handa et al (2018) as well as Banerjee et al (2015), we convert all variables into z‐scores by subtracting the comparison group mean (at each wave) and dividing by the comparison group standard deviation (at each wave); this implies that at each wave the comparison group has a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1. We then create an overall index for each domain based on the equally weighted average of the z‐score of each indicator in the domain.…”

“…We have constructed similar multiplier estimates for two cash transfer programmes operated by the Government of Zambia (Handa et al, 2018), which averaged to 1.65, about the same range of the average (1.78) of the three estimates shown in Table 7. We show bias‐corrected bootstrapped confidence intervals (1,000 repetitions) for each of the multiplier estimates, in two cases the confidence intervals do include one; on the other hand, for Malawi the implied multiplier could be as large as five.…”

“…This rapid increase is due in part to a fundamental change in the discourse around the role of social protection, especially cash transfers, in a country’s wider economic development strategy. While often viewed suspiciously as a “hand‐out” that leads to dependency, cash transfers are slowly being recognized as a cost‐effective approach to supporting a country’s inclusive growth agenda (Davis et al, 2016; Handa et al, 2018b). Examples of countries that have recently scaled up cash transfers as part of their overall economic development strategy include Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, and Zambia.…”

Cash and In-Kind Transfers in Humanitarian Settings: A Review of Evidence and Knowledge Gaps

“…For more information on humanitarian crises, see Humanitarian Coalition (last accessed December 2021).2 In more stable developing contexts, a vast literature in social sciences shows that social protection programs help reduce poverty and inequality, enhance livelihoods, and have long-term positive impacts on human capital development(Baird et al 2014;Bastagli et al 2016;Davis et al 2016;Handa et al 2018;Hidrobo et al 2018). 3 According to the 2020 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, there is a clear upward trend in the use of social protection programs in the form of cash and vouchers.…”