research proposal on social cash transfer

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The household and individual-level productive impacts of cash transfer programs in Sub-Saharan Africa

Silvio daidone.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy

Benjamin Davis

Sudhanshu handa.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Paul Winters

Associate Vice-President of the Strategy and Knowledge Department International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Rome, Italy

Associated Data

Silvio Daidone is a economist and Benjamin Davis is a Strategic Program Leader, both with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy. Sudhanshu Handa is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Paul Winters is the Associate Vice-President of the Strategy and Knowledge Department, International Fund for Agricultural Development, Rome, Italy. The research presented in this article has been carried out under the auspices of the “From Protection to Production” (PtoP) project, a collaborative effort of the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The project has received funding from the DFID Research and Evidence Division, the European Union through the “Improved Global Governance for Hunger Reduction Programme”, and the FAO Regular Fund. The authors would like to thank the following: two anonymous reviewers and the journal editor, who have provided excellent comments and significantly contributed to the improvement of the article; Alejandro Grinspun, Fabio Veras Soares, and Marco Knowles for technical review of previous drafts; Ervin Prifti and Noemi Pace for their useful suggestions and comments. The authors are also grateful to participants at the following conferences and workshops: 2017 APPAM International Conference, Brussels; 2016 Transfer Project workshop, Addis Ababa; 2016 IFAD-3IE Designing and implementing high-quality, policy-relevant impact evaluations, Rome; 2015 SASPEN Conference on Social Protection, Johannesburg; 2015 Global Food Security Conference, Ithaca; 2014 IPEA International Seminar “Social protection, entrepreneurship and labor market activation - Evidence for better policies”, Brasilia; 2014 University of Florence, Department of Economics & Management Seminars, Florence; 2014 Africa Community of Practice (CoP) on Conditional Cash Transfers and Cash Transfers; 2014 African Union Expert Consultation on Children and Social Protection Systems, Cape Town; 2014 IDS Graduation and Social Protection Conference, Kigali. The authors would also like to remember Josh Dewbre, a founding member of the PtoP team, who passed away in April 2015, who had participated in the fieldwork and in the analysis of several programs included in this study. All mistakes and omissions are those of the authors

The objective of most cash transfer programs is to alleviate poverty and/or food insecurity directly and through improvements in educational, health, and nutritional status ( Fiszbein et al. 2009 ; Slater 2011 ). As these programs are key components of social protection strategies, understanding their impact on social outcomes is critical and a large body of literature has emerged on the social impacts of cash transfers focusing primarily on the health, nutrition, and schooling of the children of the poor ( Fiszbein et al. 2009 ; Adato and Hoddinott 2010 ; Handa et al. 2010 ). Cash transfers may also have productive impacts, a dimension that only recently has started to receive explicit attention in the literature ( Banerjee et al. 2015 ; Haushofer and Shapiro 2016 ; Tirivayi, Knowles, and Davis 2016 ; Hidrobo et al. 2018 ).

If markets function perfectly, the expectation is that providing cash to poor households should have no impact on productive activities since production and consumption are separable ( Singh, Squire, and Strauss 1986 ). However, in the presence of credit, insurance, labor, and other market constraints, the provision of cash may help overcome market failures, leading to greater productive investment and spending, and potentially creating a household-level multiplier effect. Along with shifting investment and spending, cash may also lead to a reallocation of household resources, particularly labor. A relatively small number of papers have sought to address these productive impacts of cash transfers, including Boone et al. (2013) and Covarrubias, Davis, and Winters (2012) for Malawi, Gertler, Martinez, and Rubio-Codina (2012) and Todd, Winters, and Hertz (2010) for Mexico, Veras Soares, Perez Ribas, and Hirata (2010) for Paraguay, and Maluccio (2010) for Nicaragua. However, none collected data with the primary purpose of examining productive impacts and are thus limited in what they can analyze.

Understanding the productive impacts of cash transfers is important from a policy perspective, as governments often voice concerns about “dependency” when considering cash transfers. First, there is a concern that providing cash to the poor leads them to work less and to rely on the transfers. An analysis of resource use, particularly labor use, and the productive impacts of cash transfers then provides insights into whether, in the short to medium term, cash transfers induce households to reduce their productive activities or to increase them.

Second, there is interest regarding whether over the medium term a cash transfer program could induce households or individuals to transition out of poverty and to “graduate” from a program ( Daidone et al. 2015 ). Of course, given the focus on often very poor households, as well as on breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty through improved child outcomes, such an expectation may be unrealistic. But assessing the economic impact of cash transfers can at least determine if transfers are consistent with increased productive engagement and asset accumulation.

This article brings together evidence from seven experimental and non-experimental impact evaluations of government-run unconditional cash transfer programs in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The unique focus on productive impacts of cash transfer programs was introduced into these evaluations by the From Protection to Production (PtoP) research project, itself part of the broader Transfer Project, a joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, and University of North Carolina effort to support and systemize lessons from impact evaluations of cash transfer programs in SSA. Our article adds value to the current literature by combining evidence from evaluations with similar outcomes and analysis, focusing on seven large government-run unconditional cash transfers in SSA, a typology of program and geographic area less present in the literature. We rigorously identify the response of households and individuals to income changes and link study findings to testable hypotheses about how impacts on productive decisions, labor supply, and risk-coping strategies differ across settings.

Theoretical Framework

If markets function perfectly, the provision of cash should have no impact on household decisions with respect to production. Households that face no labor, credit, or other market constraints are assumed to be able to hire labor at the going wage, obtain credit at the prevailing interest rate, and buy and sell inputs or outputs at given market prices. Production decisions are made to provide the maximum return. Under such conditions, production and consumption decisions can be viewed as “separable” in that households first maximize profit/income from production decisions and then use the income generated from these decisions to maximize utility from consumption ( Singh, Squire, and Strauss 1986 ). A cash transfer should influence consumption by relaxing a household’s budget constraint, but not production.

Cash Transfers and Productive Investments

Poor households in the rural areas of developing countries often face missing or poorly functioning markets in a number of dimensions. Credit markets are plagued by asymmetric information, which leads to adverse selection and moral hazard. Poor households often have difficulty borrowing due to a lack of collateral and often face credit rationing due to asymmetric information or government policies ( Feder et al. 1990 ). Similarly, markets for insurance to cope with risk are also plagued by issues of adverse selection and moral hazard. Even in localized settings where information availability might allow for enforcement of mutual insurance arrangements, the evidence suggests that only partial insurance is possible ( Deaton 1992 ; Townsend 1994 ; Jalan and Ravallion 1999 ). As such, households faced with uncertainty often manage risk through ex ante strategies such as precautionary savings (via livestock or other assets) or diversification of varieties, crops and income-generating activities, which may not provide the highest expected income but allow for hedging against risk. In the labor market, monitoring worker effort is difficult, particularly in agriculture, where yields are uncertain and it is difficult to judge individual labor effort ( Dasgupta 1993 ). The need to supervise hired labor can inhibit hiring and create an incentive to use family labor, thus making family and hired labor imperfect substitutes. In food markets, transportation costs, opportunity costs of time for transactions, and the need to gather market information add costs to selling and buying food, creating a price difference between the selling and buying price. These high transaction costs in staple markets can make selfsufficiency the optimal choice leaving some households outside the market ( Key, Sadoulet, and de Janvry 2000 ).

If multiple market failures exist as described above, the production and consumption decisions of households can be viewed as “non-separable” in the sense that they are jointly determined ( Singh, Squire, and Strauss 1986 ). The choice of crops to produce is not necessarily what would be the most profitable, but what would ensure that households have enough food to eat. Households may participate in wage labor markets not because it is the highest return to labor, but to obtain liquidity to purchase inputs or as a means to hedge against risk.

Under conditions of market imperfections and thus non-separability, an infusion of cash into a household can alter household decision making. Cash provides liquidity to allow the purchase of inputs and for productive investment that alter production possibilities. For credit-constrained households, cash transfers can relax the binding credit constraint and expand the set of feasible production choices in two ways ( Phimister 1995 ; Karlan et al. 2014 ; Bazzi, Sumarto, and Suryahadi 2015 ): ( a ) directly by increasing current liquidity; ( b ) indirectly by improving the credit rating of the beneficiary who is entitled to a future stream of cash. Further, credit constraints can be relaxed if cash transfers provide enough resources for households to save. Classic saving and consumption theories, like Friedman’s Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH), suggest that saving and spending behavior should be based on expectations for lifetime earnings and not be affected by transitory income shocks. However, in the presence of imperfect markets, precautionary savings and liquidity constraints may allow departures from the PIH. Depending on their attitude towards risk and debt, households may choose to either save more or reduce inefficient precautionary savings and other detrimental risk-coping strategies as they rely on the transfers as a form of insurance ( Rosenzweig and Wolpin 1993 ).

Cash Transfers and Labor Supply

Cash transfers constitute an increase in nonlabor income, relaxing the household budget constraint and making work less attractive relative to leisure ( Moffitt 2002 ; Saez 2002 ). However, cash transfers may not lead to reductions in adult labor supply. First, the income elasticity of leisure may be quite low for very poor households, who are generally the target of the cash transfer program ( Fiszbein et al. 2009 ). Second, the cash transfer may crowd-out other income sources such as income from remittances, when the motives for private transfers are based on altruism ( Cox 1987 ; Cox and Jimenez 1990 ). Third, in the presence of market imperfections such as fixed costs to work and credit constraints, an increase in unearned income can help overcome these barriers and translate into increased labor supply ( Cogan 2000 ; Basu, Das, and Dutta 2010 ). Selling their own labor might be the only viable strategy for adult household members to obtain liquidity and meet their consumption or investment needs ( Rose 2001 ). The interplay of these channels makes it an empirical question whether, and to what extent, a given amount of CT affects the labor supply of adults and work incentives of recipient households. 1

Similar to adult labor, the effects of cash transfers on child work cannot be determined a priori. Cash transfers may affect child labor by modifying the propensity to attend school or by changing the returns to child labor ( Fiszbein et al. 2009 ; de Hoop and Rosati 2014 ). If the child begins to attend school as a result of the transfer, the time available to the child for leisure and for participation in income-generating activities is reduced. Further, if the transfer exceeds the monetary cost of education (fees, books, uniforms, etc.), the budget constraint shifts upwards and child labor should unambiguously decrease. However, if the household invests the transfer in productive activities, the returns to child work may increase, thereby offsetting the income effect and possibly resulting in increased child labor.

Cash Transfers and Risk Management

Through the regular and predictable provision of financial resources, cash transfer programs can serve as insurance against risks. Further, they may improve beneficiaries’ ability to manage risk and shocks. This includes avoiding detrimental risk coping strategies, such as distress sales of productive assets or children being pulled out of school. Further, cash transfers may influence production through farmers’ risk preferences. With incomplete insurance markets, risk-averse farmers anticipate not being able to recover from shocks, which leads them to opt for less risky portfolios, which in turn also generate lower returns. By means of altering total farm household wealth, cash transfers can have an effect on farmers’ risk attitudes and thus on their production decisions ( Pope and Just 1991 ; Hennessy 1998 ; Serra et al. 2006 ). Under the assumption that farmers are characterized by decreasing absolute risk aversion preferences, cash transfers may reduce farmers’ degree of risk aversion. Willingness to assume more risk may result in an increase in production through an increase in input use ( Dercon 1996 ; Hennessy 1998 ). Hence, through increased liquidity or reduced risk aversion, cash transfers may lead farmers to embark in investment projects such as buying fertilizers and improved seeds.

Implications of Cash Transfer Design and Features

The design and implementation of a cash transfer program has an influence on its potential productive impact, which is defined here as increasing the capacity of the household to generate income through productive expenditures (not for consumption). 2 With respect to frequency of payments, for instance, individuals may treat income received as a lump sum differently to income received in multiple smaller payments. Chambers and Spencer (2008) determined that individuals spend less and save more from lump-sum tax refunds than monthly reductions in withholding (tax retention). Individuals are also more likely to make investments and/or pay down debt with a lump-sum tax refund. Bastagli et al. (2018) suggest that lumpy payments could have a higher impact on investments rather than consumption smoothing, the impact being potentially stronger if timing is linked to seasonal changes. In the Kenya Give Directly experiment, Haushofer and Shapiro (2016) randomize the timing of transfers (monthly vs. lump-sum). These authors suggest that if households are both credit- and savings-constrained, we would expect fewer purchases of expensive assets among monthly transfer recipients because the savings constraint would prevent this group from saving their transfer to buy the asset, and the credit constraint would prevent it from borrowing against the promise of the future transfer ( Haushofer and Shapiro 2016 , p. 2023). Conversely, recipients of a lump sum may be keen to invest it immediately into a large durable if they are not sure they can pace their non-durable consumption and save.

Transfer amounts may influence not only monetary outcomes but also behavioral decisions around investment and labor market participation. Sizeable transfers can trigger investment decisions versus current expenditure, while transfers that are too small to cover even the basic food consumption needs of households are unlikely to bring about such change. Bastagli et al. (2018) suggest that the size of the transfer may indeed affect the type of investment: higher amounts may be used for bulkier investments (e.g., cow) and smaller amounts for smaller investments (e.g., chickens and goats). With respect to labor supply, Del Carpio (2008) and Basu, Das, and Dutta (2010) show that unearned non-labor income and the labor supply of rural households have an inverted-U relationship: for low levels of the cash transfer, households react by increasing the amount of supplied labor, but after reaching a critical level of cash they reduce labor supply, a result also found by Prifti et al. (2018) .

A key component of a program’s design is the targeting of beneficiaries, as the targeting rules determine the demographic and geographic profile of beneficiary households. For instance, if a households’ individuals who are eligible for a program are concentrated in particular areas of a country (“geographic targeting”), providing cash to everyone within those regions may be an effective method to transfer resources (see Baker and Grosh 1994 and Elbers et al. 2007 ). In SSA, many cash transfer programs target labor-constrained households. With limited labor availability, the impact of cash transfers on production may be either muted or imply a reallocation of family labor to hired labor or a change in the household livelihood strategy from physically-demanding income-generating activities to other that require less-intensive labor. Households in high-potential agricultural areas may be more likely to invest in agriculture compared to those in areas with less potential, or in periurban areas where non-agricultural activities may have a higher return.

Other aspects of program design may also influence productive impacts. The literature on intra-household allocation shows that households may respond differently to income changes depending on who has control of the resources within a household ( Quisumbing 2003 ). If transfers target female beneficiaries, income is likely to be used differently than if transfers target male household members. If transfers accrue to household members with certain consumption preferences or interest in a particular productive activity, resources may be used in a certain direction.

Even without explicit conditions on transfers, the fact the transfers come from the government and come with messages or expectations can influence how they are used ( Pellerano and Barca 2017 ). Informal conditionality, often referred as “soft conditionality” may occur when beneficiaries are involved in training/education sessions that provide information on the “best use” of the transfers, or when community-based case management systems are put in place to oversee the “good use” of the transfer ( Pace et al. 2019 ). Sometimes individuals use “mental accounting” to decide on how to use funds— that is, they dedicate income from certain sources for specific types of expenditures ( Thaler 1990 ). The use of transfers can then depend on how beneficiaries perceive these funds and if, due to messaging or other factors, they link these transfers to certain types of spending, including productive spending. In this case, transfer income is spent differently from general income as it exerts both an income and a substitution effect.

Testable Hypotheses

The above discussion leaves us with a number of testable hypotheses to guide our interpretation of the empirical results ( table 1 ). The potential impact on household agricultural and non-agricultural selfemployment activities is conditional over a number of dimensions. The existence of a liquidity, credit and/or insurance constraint should lead to a positive impact on all selfemployment economic indicators, including land and other inputs use. The availability of family labor should lead to greater productive impacts. Female-headed households may have a smaller response since women tend to be more constrained across a range of dimensions, including landownership, services, credit, etc. ( Quisumbing et al. 2014 ; Doss et al. 2015 ). Female-headed households may also be confounded with less male labor. The relative profitability of crop, livestock, and/or non-agricultural activities in a given economic context is germane. If crop production is the activity of last resort, for example, then the impact on related outcomes could be negative, as households shift into other activities, and vice versa with livestock and non-agricultural activities. Impacts on livestock can be expected to be positive if cash transfers allow households to cross a “critical asset threshold”, especially at a low initial level of assets ( Carter and Barrett 2006 ). The impact on sales could be either positive if the cash increases farmer commercialization by reducing transaction costs ( Key, Sadoulet, and de Janvry 2000 ), or negative if a liquidity constraint forces premature consumption and sales of “green” maize, which is a documented phenomenon in Malawi ( FEWS NET 2002 ). Program messaging is also important—the stronger the social messaging, the greater the likelihood of larger impacts on social outcomes ( Pace et al. 2019 ) and smaller impact on income-generating activities, whereas any agricultural messaging could boost the impact. Finally, missing or poorly functioning input and/or output markets would reduce the impact on income-generation outcomes.

Expected Direction of Cash Transfers Impacts

The second panel in table 1 describes the hypotheses of the impact of cash transfer programs on labor outcomes. Agricultural wage labor is clearly an activity of last resort, while non-agricultural labor, in the context where most of these programs are taking place, is a higher-return activity ( Davis, Di Giuseppe, and Zezza 2017 ). The potential impact on family farm and non-agricultural business labor cannot be determined a priori—if the economic activity is profitable and liquidity-constrained, then we would expect a positive impact. If agriculture itself and/or the non-agricultural business is also a less-preferred activity, then the cash transfer could lead to a reduction in time spent in these activities.

A similar logic applies to child labor. Child wage labor is also clearly an activity of last resort, and we would expect the program to lead to a reduction. However, the expected impact on on-farm child labor could go in either direction, depending on the profitability of farming, as well the increased demand for labor given increases in household agricultural activities. This impact is conditional on the overall availability of household labor in the family (the more available labor, the less likely child labor will be employed) as well as the messaging of the program and impacts on child schooling.

The third panel in table 1 describes the hypotheses of impact on savings, credit, debt, and risk-coping outcomes. Most programs posit positive potential impacts on credit, in that cash transfers can serve as either collateral for loans or at least a signal of improved capacity to repay loans. But this supposes the existence of functioning credit markets. In fact, in most of the contexts in which these programs operate credit is available, but usually of a “loan shark” nature, with very high interest rates, and only as an option of last resort. In this context, the programs could lead to a reduction in debt levels—as households pay off debt—and a reduction in the number of loan transactions. The impact on savings cannot be determined a priori: under uncertainty, asset-based social protection interventions can significantly reduce savings by mitigating the need for precautionary saving through the provision of a welfare safety net for consumption ( Hubbard, Skinner, and Zeldes 1995 ). Furthermore, if parents rely on children for support in old age, then expenditure on children may serve as a substitute for savings, implying that households with more children will save even less ( Nerlove, Razin, and Sadka 1985 ). However, following the life cycle hypothesis, if farm households perceive transfers as transitory rather than permanent income, their savings can increase ( Paxson 1992 ). The impact on negative risk-coping strategies should be clear—the receipt of cash should reduce the likelihood that beneficiaries turn to risk-coping strategies with long-term negative implications.

Finally, at the end of table 1 , we suggest the possible direction of impacts of social cash transfers on private transfers and remittances. From a theoretical perspective, the impact on both kinds of transfers could be either positive or negative. If private transfers are driven by altruistic motives on the part of senders, an increase in social transfers received by a household may lead to a reduction in private transfers, or a crowding-out effect ( Cox 1987 ). On the contrary, if private transfers are exchange-driven (as part of an explicit or implicit ex-ante arrangement or promise), they may remain the same or increase as a result of an increase in social transfers ( Cox 1987 , 1990 ; Altonji, Hayashi, and Kotlikoff 2000 ).

Cash Transfer Programs Analyzed

The characteristics of the seven government-run cash transfer programs analyzed in this article can be found in table 2 . Most of the programs provide cash without any explicit conditions on their receipt, although in some cases there is either some messaging or other soft conditions. For example, in Ghana, caretakers of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) are supposed to register the children and ensure they are enrolled in school, although these conditions are not applied ( Oxford Policy Management 2013 ). In Lesotho, the transfer is provided with messaging on the importance of children’s needs like food, clothes, shoes, school uniforms, and related expenses ( Oxford Policy Management 2014 ; Pellerano et al. 2014 ), though during the time of the evaluation beneficiaries received an additional, one-time cash top-up, the Food Emergency Grant, which was delivered with the message of increasing agricultural production in response to a severe drought.

Country Programs

Note : Country labels are as follows: ETH = Ethiopia; GHA = Ghana; KEN = Kenya; LSO = Lesotho; MWI = Malawi; ZAM = Zambia; ZIM = Zimbabwe. Currency acronyms: ETB = Ethiopian Birr; G¢ = Ghanaian Cedis; KSh = Kenyan Shilling; LSL = Lesotho Loti; MKW = Malawian Kwacha; ZMK = New Zambian Kwacha; $ = U.S. dollars

The targeting in these programs tends to emphasize very poor households with limited availability of labor. Ethiopia, Ghana, and Kenya explicitly target households with OVCs, and most programs target households that are explicitly defined as labor-constrained or that are likely to be labor-constrained by the manner in which they are identified (e.g., elderly, single parents, OVCs being supported by grandparents, or single parents). The Child Grant (CG) model of the Zambia Social Cash Transfer is an exception for two reasons: first, it targets households with children in a more narrow age range (between 0 and 5 years), which has the implication of giving preferential access to families with relatively younger parents; second, it adopts a categorical targeting approach within communities, as it aims to cover all children within selected districts.

The importance of targeting can be understood from the age pyramids of the baseline samples used for the evaluation of the seven programs (available in the online supplementary material , appendix A ). In Zambia, there are a large number of children in the age band from 0 to 5 years, a large share of adults aged between 18 and 29, and very few elderly household members. The other countries show a smaller share of able-bodied adult members, and a larger share of older children and older adults.

The amount of the transfer relative to household income or expenditures and the timing of the receipt of transfers may influence its use. The CG in Zambia was the most generous transfer for the eligible population, at around 28% of median household consumption at baseline. Most of the other programs were providing between 20% and 25% of household consumption, with the noticeable exception of Ghana, at 10%—although after the follow-up survey the government tripled the amount for transfer beneficiaries. Between the baseline and the follow-up survey, some governments increased the amount of the transfer: in Zambia the increase was meant to offset the negative effects of inflation. 3 For those countries using a flat rate, the per capita value varies by household size. While for average-size households the Kenya transfer represented 14% of per capita consumption, the share ranged from 10% to 22% for large and small households, respectively. 4

Although transfers are intended to be provided on a regular basis, this is not necessarily what happens in practice. In Zambia the transfers were delivered regularly throughout the evaluation period, with only one missed payment in Shangombo district ( American Institutes for Research 2013a ). In Ghana and Lesotho, the schedule suffered major disruptions with several missed payments, which were partly recovered with large lumpy amounts close to the follow-up survey. 5

Design of the Impact Evaluations

The objective of an impact evaluation is to attribute an observed impact to a program intervention. Since one cannot observe the outcome of a household if it had not been a beneficiary, an impact evaluation is essentially a missing data problem and entails identifying a group of non-beneficiaries, the control group, as similar as possible to the beneficiary group to yield a proxy for this missing data (i.e., a counterfactual).

Randomized control trials (RCTs) are widely seen as the best way to generate a reasonable control group ( Khandker, Koolwal and Samad 2010 ; Gertler et al. 2011 ). For government programs, this generally involves the use of randomized phase-in of beneficiaries into the programs ( Duflo, Glennersterz, and Kremer 2007 ). In this approach, eligible households in villages or communities where the program will operate are identified and the order in which they will receive the program is randomly determined. The random selection is done at the village or community level to prevent spillover effects from beneficiaries to non-beneficiaries contaminating the control group. In four of the countries analyzed for this study—Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, and Zambia—this approach was used to measure the counterfactual. Pellerano et al. (2012) , Ward et al. (2010) , Handa et al. (2014) and American Institutes for Research (2011) provide detailed descriptions of the different evaluation designs in these countries.

However, experimental designs are difficult to implement in practice for political, ethical, institutional, and logistical reasons, particularly when programs are owned by national governments.

In the case of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program in Ghana, an RCT was not possible due to practical considerations of the program, and a longitudinal propensity score matching (PSM) design was used instead. Baseline data were collected from future beneficiaries who were part of a larger nationally representative sample of households surveyed, as part of a research study conducted by the Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research of the University of Ghana-Legon (ISSER) and Yale University in the first quarter of 2010. A comparison group of “matched” households was selected from the ISSER sample and re-interviewed after 24 months, along with LEAP beneficiaries to measure changes in outcomes across treatment and comparison groups. The conditions surrounding the LEAP study were virtually ideal for PSM to approximate the benchmark experimental estimator as indicated by Diaz and Handa (2006) and Heckman et al. (1998) , and were as follows: ( a ) a rich set of pre-program information was available from both groups of households; ( b ) information was collected in the same manner, in this case using the exact same instruments, survey protocols and field teams; and ( c ) longitudinal data were available to account for potential unobserved community differences across comparison and intervention sites over time. The main challenge, on the other hand, was the ability to generate enough observations from the national survey that were on the “thick” region of common support, given LEAP’s unique eligibility criteria. This proved difficult and was ultimately addressed by applying inverse probability weighting (IPW) to the resulting samples. Further details of this design and analysis of the matched comparison group are presented in the LEAP Evaluation Baseline Report ( Handa and Park 2011 ).

In Zimbabwe, the evaluation study of the Harmonized Social Cash Transfer (HSCT) program compared cash transfer recipient households from Phase 2 districts with eligible households in Phase 4 districts that were not going to receive the transfers during the period of the study. The major factor in the choice of a non-experimental design for the HSCT instead of a RCT was the stated policy of the government that all eligible households be enrolled once a district entered the program. After randomly selecting the study wards within treatment districts and by geographic proximity and similarity in agroecological conditions in comparison districts, the government conducted targeting to identify eligible households in exactly the same way in both the treatment and the comparison wards to create equivalent and comparable groups. In this sense, households in the comparison group are precisely those that are eligible for the program and that were enrolled at a future date—they are thus a genuine “delayed entry” comparison group ( American Institutes for Research 2013b ).

Finally, in terms of the Tigray Social Cash Transfer Pilot Programme (SCTPP) in Ethiopia, randomization was not possible given the rollout of the pilot. The evaluators from the International Food Policy Research Institute argued that it was not possible to find analogous comparison communities ( tabias ), and therefore comparison households were taken from treatment tabias . A PSM was used in the analysis ( Berhane et al. 2012 , 2015).

With the creation of a reasonable control group, the quantitative analysis in each country involved taking a random sample of treatment and control households of suitable size (based on power calculations) for assessing impact on key indicators, collecting baseline information prior to the start of the program, and administering one or more rounds of follow-up data collection to assess impact. Table 3 provides an overview of the evaluation design of the programs, noting when the first (baseline) and subsequent rounds of data were collected. It also includes the sample size for both the eligible and, when available, ineligible population.

Programs Evaluation, Design, and Sample Size

Note : HH and IND are households and individuals, respectively. Country labels are as follows: ETH = Ethiopia; GHA = Ghana; KEN = Kenya; LSO = Lesotho; MWI = Malawi; ZAM = Zambia; ZIM = Zimbabwe. Organization acronyms: IFPRI = International Food Policy Research Institute; UNC = University of North Carolina; ISSER = Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research at University of Ghana; OPM = Oxford Policy Management; CSR = Centre for Social Research at University of Malawi; AIR = American Institute for Research; CASS = Centre of Applied Social Sciences at University of Zimbabwe.

Analytical Approach

The statistical approach used to derive the average treatment effect of the cash transfer programs is the difference in difference (DiD) estimator. 6 The key assumption underpinning the DiD is that there is no systematic unobserved time-varying difference between the treatment and control groups that would cause the outcomes for the comparison group and treated group to have different trends over time. The random assignment to the groups, the geographical proximity of the samples, and the rather short duration between pre- and post-intervention measurements make this assumption reasonable. Further, the DiD was estimated in a multivariate framework, controlling for potential intervening factors that might not be perfectly balanced across treatment and control units and/or are strong predictors of the outcome. Not only does this allow for possible confounders to be controlled, but it also increases the efficiency of the estimates by reducing the residual variance in the model. The estimation model is shown in equation (1) :

where Y it is the outcome indicator of interest; D i is a dummy equal to 1 if household i received the treatment, and 0 otherwise; R t is a time dummy equal to 0 for the baseline and 1 for the follow-up round; R t * D i is the interaction between the intervention and time dummies; its coefficient β 3 is the double difference estimator, which captures the impact of the program, and ε it is the statistical error term. To control for household and community characteristics that may influence the outcome of interest beyond the treatment effect alone, researchers in each country’s case studies added Z i , a vector of country-specific household and community characteristics. In the online supplementary material , we provide the list of control variables across countries ( appendix C ) and robustness checks across specifications ( appendix D ).

Cluster-robust standard errors were applied to account for the lack of independence across observations due to clustering of households within communities ( Bertrand, Duflo, and Mullainathan 2004 ). Further, in a few cases where panel data were not available (i.e., outcome variables were observed only at follow-up), a single-difference estimator or a PSM, or a combination of the two such as the IPW were applied.

Several factors can cause attrition, including migration, dissolution of the household, death and divorce, or refusal to answer. Not only does attrition potentially lead to less precise estimates of program impacts due to reduced sample size, but it can also contribute to selection bias if the treatment and control groups differ in the types of individuals who leave the sample.

In three of the studied programs (Lesotho, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), inverse probability weights were used to account for attrition in the follow-up sample. In Lesotho, the overall rate of attrition was not particularly high (8.8%), but Pellerano et al. (2014) found that there were some systematic differences in the response to the follow-up survey between the treatment and control group. In Zambia, American Institutes for Research (2013a) found small differences at the 24-month follow-up, which affected treatment and control households equally. Similarly to the CG in Zambia, American Institutes for Research (2015) found no differential attrition in Zimbabwe. However, some evidence of overall attrition emerged; for 24 out of 135 outcome indicators at baseline, statistically significant differences were found between the group of households that remained in the follow-up and the households who were missing in the follow-up.

In Ghana and Malawi, the overall attrition rate was quite low (6.7% and 4.5%, respectively). In Ghana, Handa et al. (2014) found no systematic pattern among household characteristics. In Kenya, the attrition rate was quite substantial (18% and 22% at follow-ups in 2009 and 2011, respectively). However, Kenya CT-OVC Evaluation Team (2012) suggested that attrition is not correlated with treatment assignment and other characteristics such as household size.

Baseline Balance

In appendix B of the online supplementary material , we provide a baseline assessment of the income-generating activities ( table B1 ) and of the household socio-demographic characteristics ( table B2 ) for the treatment and the control groups in the cash transfer programs along with tests of difference. Unsurprisingly, given the targeting of rural populations, the vast majority of beneficiaries are engaged in agricultural activities and work for themselves. The share of households dedicated to either livestock rearing or crop production is above 80% in five countries, with the exception of Ethiopia and Ghana (71% and 63%, respectively). A minority of households generate income from off-farm enterprises, the highest share being found in Ghana, where 30% of households are involved in small businesses such as retail sale. Given the lack of local labor markets, wage employment is mostly casual/temporary. Further, eligible households rely on various sources of cash and in-kind transfers, especially private remittances from friends and relatives.

With respect to baseline household sociodemographic characteristics, randomization has worked to create a good counterfactual in Malawi and Zambia, and for Lesotho there are few differences across arms. In Zimbabwe too, despite the non-experimental nature of the study, the household identification process managed to create equivalent balanced groups ( Hurrell, Ward, and Merttens 2008 ; American Institutes for Research 2011 , 2013b ; Pellerano et al. 2012 ; Handa et al. 2014 ).

In Ghana, the ISSER matched sample is quite different from the sample of program beneficiaries because LEAP households are very unique and the ISSER survey was a national survey. In Ethiopia, households in the treatment group were much smaller than in the comparison group, with older heads and much more likely to be female-headed and more labor-constrained. These differences are not surprising since controls were chosen from the non-selected households in treatment communities. In Kenya too, despite the RCT design, balance at baseline was not achieved because the final priority ranking of eligible households (based on age of household head) that was performed in treatment areas was not simultaneously conducted in control areas. Tables B1 and B2 show household characteristics for these three countries after having applied IPW, with which a reasonable balance between treatment and control is achieved, though a few differences remain, especially for Ghana. This reinforces our argument for using the DID methodology in a multivariate framework.

To test hypotheses that cash transfers have household-level productive effects as outlined above, four sets of indicators are examined: ( a ) agricultural production, ( b ) agricultural inputs and assets, ( c ) labor supply of adults and children, and ( d ) other livelihood strategies and risk coping behavior. Since the details of questionnaires in each country were not identical, indicator availability and definitions vary according to the country. Nonetheless, the tables of results have been organized to ensure the greatest comparability possible with data limitations noted (N/A=not available). A graphical representation of some relevant indicators available across most countries is presented in figure 1 . In this graph we report the average intent-to-treat effects as z-score indices, standardized to the control group at baseline in order to facilitate cross-country comparison.

Note : This figure summarizes the average intent-to-treat effects by country presented in tables 4 to ​ to9. 9 . Treatment effects are presented as z-score indices, standardized to the control/comparison group at baseline. Each entry shows the standardized outcome and its 90% confidence interval. Country labels are as follows: ETH = Ethiopia; GHA = Ghana; KEN = Kenya; LSO = Lesotho; MWI = Malawi; ZAM = Zambia; ZIM = Zimbabwe.

The results presented in the tables focus on full sample mean impacts. As Heckman, Smith, and Clements (1997) point out, however, judgments about the “success” of a social program should depend on more than the average treatment effect, and as noted in our discussion of the testable hypotheses above, the ultimate impact of the program may be conditional on a number of dimensions of heterogeneity. Given available data, heterogeneity analysis is carried out by gender of household head (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi), per capita transfer amount when the transfer is flat per household (Kenya and Zambia), labor availability (Lesotho, Malawi, and Zimbabwe) and by woreda in Ethiopia. We refer to the most significant heterogeneous results, while discussing each set of indicators. Tables with heterogeneous effects are reported in online supplementary material appendix E (from E7 to E13).

Household-Level Productive Impacts

Table 4 presents the impact of the cash transfer programs on indicators of agricultural production. In Zambia agricultural output expanded, as shown by a slightly larger share of households producing rice and groundnut and a much larger value of harvest (145.9 new Zambian Kwacha - ZMW). Cassava production fell, consistent with a reduction observed in consumption, probably as a result of the change in diets. This jump in agricultural output is associated with increases in home consumption and crop sales, the latter increasing by 12 percentage points (pp) from an overall base of 22%.

Impacts on Agricultural Production

Note : Country labels are as follows: ETH = Ethiopia; GHA = Ghana; KEN = Kenya; LSO = Lesotho; MWI = Malawi; ZAM = Zambia; ZIM = Zimbabwe.

Significance level: ***= <0.01, **= <0.05, and, *= <0.1.

Cluster robust standard errors (not reported). N/A-indicator not available. HH stands for households, TLU for Tropical Livestock Units.

In Lesotho, the CGP led to a significant increase in maize, sorghum, and vegetable production. The latter is at least partially attributable to more rounds of planting and production. This increase in crop production did not translate into higher marketing of crops, except for a small increase in bartering. In terms of heterogeneous impact effects, the large and positive impact on the quantity of maize produced is substantially driven by labor-unconstrained households, while the impacts on sorghum are significantly larger for moderately and severely labor-constrained households. 7 Daidone et al. (2014) explain this different pattern of results by the lower labor requirements for sorghum compared to maize, especially for harvest activities. Further, households with labor capacity are also much more likely to be involved in homestead gardening.

In Zimbabwe, households moved away from traditional crops such as finger millet to roundnuts and pearl millet, and overall marketing of surplus production remained low ( American Institutes for Research 2015 ). 8 Similarly, in other countries we observe a switch in crop production. For instance, in Ethiopia the value of production increased by 293 Ethiopian Birr, probably driven by higher sorghum yields, but production of barley decreased. In Malawi we do not observe any significant increases, nor reductions in cultivation of specific crops, though overall the value of production increased by 1,512 Malawian Kwacha (MKW). In both Ethiopia and Malawi, the impacts of the cash transfers on production are larger for male-headed households who report significantly higher values of crop production in both countries. In Ethiopia, this result is a likely consequence of the higher sorghum yields, and that male-headed households were cropping more sorghum than femaleheaded households. In Malawi, the larger impacts on MHH are driven by greater groundnut production.

Unsurprisingly, in Ethiopia the magnitude of the impacts on crop production is relatively higher in Hintalo-Wajirat, which is a rural woreda . For instance, sorghum yields increased overall by 67.2 kg, while barley yields decreased by 47.4 kg. These impacts are driven by the group of households in Hintalo-Wajirat (excluding Bahr Tseba). Since sorghum is the most important commodity in the targeted districts, it does not come as a surprise that the impact on its productivity led to positive impacts on the total value of production, which are clearly higher in Hintalo.

Further, in Malawi the heterogeneity analysis was also extended to other aspects related to livelihoods. Given the importance of the Farmer Input Subsidy Programme (FISP), Asfaw, Pickmans, and Davis (2015) reported the impacts of the SCT on crop productivity by baseline FISP and non-FISP beneficiaries. Since FISP provides subsidized improved seeds and chemical fertilizers mainly for maize, it is unsurprising that the SCT significantly contributed to higher maize productivity for FISP beneficiaries (32 kg per acre, around 12.9 kg per ha). Further, maize is the most important crop in Malawi, which also explains why the impact on the value of production is significantly larger for FISP beneficiaries compared to non-FISP receivers (2,622 vs. 1,060 MKW, respectively). These results are quite interesting, as they reveal potential complementarities between existing social protection and agricultural interventions. 9 The impacts in Ghana and Kenya on the other hand, are more muted and even suggest some shifting away from agricultural production.

With respect to livestock, findings are broadly consistent with expected results from theory. Four programs have significant impacts: large effects on the share of households investing in diverse animal species and the number of heads of livestock in Malawi and Zambia, especially chickens. More limited effects are observed in Lesotho and Zimbabwe—for Zimbabwe, the impact is concentrated on small ruminants and chickens, while for Lesotho the effect is on pigs. No impact was found in Kenya and Ghana, and disinvestment out of livestock production is observed in Ethiopia. Further, we observe a diverse pattern of impacts, also in terms of the animal species: in Malawi, FHHs tend to invest in chicken, while MHHs invest in goats. In Kenya, despite overall insignificant results, we observed positive impacts on small ruminants’ ownership for small households (less than five members) and FHH. In Zambia, we observed stronger effects in livestock accumulation for larger households, as opposed to what is observed in crop production. 10 Finally, in Zimbabwe, labor-constrained households were more likely to invest in chickens, while households with labor invested in goats.

Table 5 presents the impact of the cash transfer programs on indicators of agricultural inputs. With cash available, households should potentially be able to expand the purchase of inputs if agriculture is a desirable economic activity and inputs are available. Coherent with the results on crop production, overall this impact is most strongly seen in Zambia, where cash transfers increase the share of households purchasing crop inputs by 18 pp, especially seeds (10 pp), as well as the intensity of input purchases, which increased by around 31 ZMW.

Impacts on Agricultural Inputs and Assets

Note : Country labels are as follows: ETH ¼ Ethiopia; GHA = Ghana; KEN = Kenya; LSO = Lesotho; MWI = Malawi; ZAM = Zambia; ZIM = Zimbabwe.

Significance levels: ***= <0.01, **= <0.05, *= <0.1.

Cluster robust standard errors (not reported). N/A-indicator not available. HH stands for households.

Similar results are found in Lesotho, although not to the same degree as in Zambia. The CGP contributed to a 7.4 and a 5.8 pp increase in the share of households purchasing seeds and chemical fertilizers, respectively. An increase in the use of pesticides was also observed (7.9 pp), which is probably a reaction to an armyworm outbreak ( FAO Lesotho 2014 ). The increase in input use could also have been influenced by the Food Emergency Grant top-up. Further, the observed impacts on agricultural inputs use and purchase are unsurprisingly driven by labor-unconstrained households, though for input expenditures no heterogeneous impact was detected.

In Ghana, the LEAP led to an increase in seed expenditures, a result driven by maleheaded households, which also reduced the hiring of labor. In Kenya, on the other hand, expenditure on seeds decreased, suggesting a shift away from intensified production. In Ethiopia we observed two opposite results: a reduction in the share of households using improved seeds and an increase in the share of those using fertilizers. Male-headed households increase the use of fertilizer, while female-headed households slightly increase hiring labor and sharecropping out more land. Since almost half of the sample of women heads is composed of widows, this result suggests that investment in agriculture for labor-constrained households such as those with widows taking care of children, might occur “indirectly”. While we did not observe significant impacts on the proportion of households using and/or purchasing crop inputs in Malawi, the intensity of use increased substantially for organic fertilizers, by 157 MKW. The impacts on this indicator were led by MHH and by non-FISP beneficiaries. Finally, in Zimbabwe, no significant impacts have been detected on agricultural inputs beyond a 2.9 pp reduction in pesticide use.

With respect to land use, in Zambia the CG brought about large increases in operated land (0.18 ha, which corresponds to around one-third of baseline mean). In Ethiopia, the share of households using land increased by around 4 pp, more strongly for male headed households and confirming the previous results on agricultural input use, while in Ghana land use significantly decreased by 0.3 ha. In Lesotho and Malawi, we did not observe significant changes in land owned or operated.

The cash transfer program in Zambia shows dramatic increases in agricultural tools, both for the share of households owning assets and the number of assets owned. These impacts are much higher for larger households. In other countries impacts are more selective, often linked to one asset. For instance, we observed an increase in sickle ownership in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, scotch carts in Lesotho, and troughs in Kenya. While the program in Ethiopia led to an increase in an overall farm tool index, there was a decrease in selected assets. Ownership of hoes and axes is generally widespread at baseline in all countries, and unsurprisingly we do not observe statistically significant impacts for these tools.

Overall, impacts on agricultural inputs and assets use/purchase are quite heterogeneous, with magnitudes changing considerably by programs and by population subgroups, and only partially consistent with expected signs from theory. Further, and with the exception of Zambia and Lesotho, these results did not translate into greater agricultural production.

Impacts on Labor Supply

The impacts of cash transfers on labor allocation are presented in table 6 (adult labor supply) and table 7 (children work), with estimates divided across types of labor activities. Cash transfers led to a reduction in adult agricultural wage labor in all countries but Ghana and Zimbabwe. In interpreting these results, agricultural wage labor and even many non-agricultural activities in rural areas are often a “refuge” sector, where poor households work to survive, hedge against agricultural risk, or obtain needed liquidity. A reduction in participation and time worked in these activities is suggestive of improved economic conditions. In Zambia, the results show that this shift in agricultural wage labor participation is compensated by significant increases of 20 days working on farm, and by increases in nonfarm businesses (17 pp and 1.6 days weekly).

Impacts on Adult Labor Supply

Note : Country labels are as follows: ETH = Ethiopia; GHA = Ghana; KEN = Kenya; LSO = Lesotho; MWI = Malawi; ZAM = Zambia; ZIM = Zimbabwe

Impacts on Children Work

In the other countries, Ghana shows an increase in men working on their own farms (almost eight days). In Lesotho, results on wage labor cannot be disentangled between farm and non-farm activities and are nonsignificant. In Malawi, the reduction in casual agricultural labor ( ganyu ) was quite relevant, especially for adult males (12 pp less and 14 days less in the last 12 months), and was not offset by either more on-farm agricultural labor or more work in non-farm family businesses. Heterogeneity analysis in Malawi also reveals that, when disaggregating by gender, adult males are more likely to work on-farm, particularly in land preparation and planting, while adult females are less likely.

In Ethiopia, we observed a significant reduction in the number of days worked in off-farm family businesses, especially for women, even though it was small in magnitude (1 day per month), and a reduced participation in non-agricultural wage labor, even though statistical significance and intensity vary by type of occupation. Finally, in Zimbabwe we observe a significant (at 5%) 20days reduction in the number of days worked on-farm in the last rainy season. This reduction is particularly strong in magnitude in labor-unconstrained households (−35.8 days).

With respect to the engagement of children in work activities, participation in family farming decreased overall in Kenya and Lesotho for younger children in Ethiopia and for girls in Zimbabwe. With respect to paid labor, results were generally statistically not significant, with a significant reduction in wage labor for boys in Ethiopia and an increase in the number of days worked by boys in Malawi. However, despite the statistical significance, the latter results are quite modest in magnitude (0.7 days/month reduction in Ethiopia, 1 day/year increase in Malawi).

Impacts on Other Livelihood Strategies and Risk-Coping Behaviour

Tables 8 and ​ and9 9 present results on other livelihood strategies and risk-coping behavior where information is available. The cash transfer programs in Zambia and Zimbabwe led to significant increases in non-farm enterprises. In Zambia, the impact is quite large in magnitude both on the share of households operating a business (almost 17 pp) and on the intensive margin of these operations (1.5 more months in operations and 78 ZMW more monthly profits for cash transfer beneficiaries compared to the control group). In Zimbabwe, the impacts are smaller in size but still economically relevant, with almost 5 pp increases in the proportion of households running this kind of business. The impact of the HSCT on non-farm activity is driven by statistically significant and positive results, especially for severely labor-constrained households that report more businesses and more profits. In other countries we did not find similarly strong results.

Impacts on Other Livelihood Strategies

Impacts on Savings and Risk Coping Behavior

Significance levels: ***= <0.01, **= <0.05, *= <0.1

In terms of private transfers, we were able to disentangle remittances from informal transfers received within the communities from family members and/or non-family members. In Ghana, remittances increased by 18% of adult equivalent consumption, while in Lesotho the amount received decreased. With respect to other informal private transfers, generally we observed positive impacts, especially food transfers (Ghana and Lesotho). Overall, findings from the Lesotho evaluation are consistent with the view that remittances are more linked to the altruistic motive, while private transfers within the community are more exchange-driven.

With respect to risk-coping behavior, impact results suggest that households are better able to handle risk. For saving and riskcoping strategies, however, data were not collected consistently and we were able to run the analysis on only a few countries. For example, in Malawi, beneficiary households report smaller amounts from sales of assets compared to control households, indicating a reduction in the distress sale of assets. In almost all countries, beneficiary households were significantly less likely to take children out of school ( Handa and de Milliano 2015 ), and in Lesotho beneficiaries were less likely to send them to work or to live elsewhere.

In Ghana and Zambia, the proportion of households’ savings increases by approximately 11 pp and 24 pp, respectively. Further, cash transfers in Ghana and Ethiopia contributed to a reduction of loans and higher debt repayments. These results likely reflect households’ preferences and risk-aversion towards being in debt, and/or the relatively expensive nature of most informal credit in these contexts. In Zambia and Ethiopia, the 1.7 and 5.3 pp increase, respectively, in the share of households borrowing could represent the more risk-seeking attitude of beneficiary households that are now more creditworthy because of the CG, and of the SCTPP that allowed greater investment in income-generating activities (though in Ethiopia only in agricultural inputs).

Multiple Hypothesis Testing

The analysis done at both the household and individual levels tested for the impact of each cash transfer program on selected one-by-one outcomes. Beyond the complexity of comparing results across countries and programs and of comparing variables that were differently constructed, overall we are examining the impacts on a large set of outcomes (from 45 in Kenya to 91 in Malawi). Further, we did not include in the results’ tables other outcomes that were analyzed in country studies. This raises questions of multiple hypotheses testing, as some of the significant results may be due to chance.

When dealing with multiple outcomes, one approach is to aggregate them into particular groupings, or “family” of outcomes, and test whether the impact of the treatment on this index is statistically different from zero ( Kling, Liebman, and Katz 2007 ; Banerjee et al. 2015 ). However, interpreting these average effects can be problematic, and we are interested in individual outcomes because they tell us more about the channels of impact. Therefore, we consider multiple-test procedures that allow to correct the significance of individual coefficients (adjusted p-values or q-values).

Traditionally, scientists have controlled for either the family-wise error rate (FWER) or false discovery rate (FDR). In this article, our preferred option is to calculate q-values using the Benjamini-Hochberg step-up method ( Simes 1986 ; Benjamini and Hochberg 1995 ) to control for the FDR. This procedure has two advantages over other methods, especially those based on the FWER: ( a ) it has more power to detect real differences with the same uncorrected p-value, especially if the number of measured parameters is large (the average treatment effect estimated for each outcome); ( b ) it is less conservative as it allows for correlation across test statistics, while other methods such as Bonferroni are based on the assumption of independence. This is unlikely to be the case in our study, where many outcome variables are correlated, especially within “family”.

In table 10 , for Lesotho we show the 28 outcomes for which impact estimates are significant at the 10% level when examined individually, and compare them with q-values calculated via Bonferroni method, Benjamini-Hochberg individually, and within six families of outcomes, which follow the structure of the results tables. If we look, for instance, at maize harvest, the p-value of 0.033 is indicative that the CGP brought about a significant 38.9 kg increase in maize harvest. However, this impact on maize harvest should be read with care, as it might be observed by chance to be significant among a set of outcomes. The adjusted p-value of 0.143 for maize harvest in Lesotho means that if one were to search for an effect among the seventeen agricultural output variables in table 4 , at least one effect this large would be observed 14.3% of the time.

Significant p-values and their Adjusted p-values for Lesotho

FW=family wise. HH=household.

As shown in table 11 (and unsurprisingly) Bonferroni represents the most restrictive method, as the number of significant impact estimates drop from 170 to 37. Further, considering one of the two less conservative approaches of Benjamini-Hochberg for each country weakens the significance of results, even though it remains mostly valid the following: ( a ) impacts observed for Zambia remain quite robust across the domains; ( b ) Malawi and Zimbabwe are the countries mostly “penalized” by the p-values correction, though for the former the story on livestock accumulation remains; ( c ) for Lesotho, results on agricultural output become less significant, though impacts on social networks and reduction in risk-coping strategies remain quite robust. 11

Number of p-values and Adjusted p-values <0.1, by Country and Method

Note : Country labels: ETH = Ethiopia; GHA = Ghana; KEN = Kenya; LSO = Lesotho; MWI = Malawi; ZAM = Zambia; ZIM = Zimbabwe. FW=family wise.

Evidence on the effects that the seven cash transfer programs have on productive activities included in the PtoP project reveals some common trends as well as contrasts across countries. The CG program in Zambia had a broad range of impacts across productive outcomes, while the other programs had more selective impacts. The results provide some indication as to the conditions that enable cash transfer programs to have a stronger effect on transforming livelihoods and increasing productive activities.

The adoption of different targeting criteria had large implications for the demographic characteristics of beneficiary households across programs. The varying degree of labor availability likely contributes in part to the differences in productive impacts observed across programs. While labor-constrained households may hire in labor and carry out limited economic activities, households with available labor are in a better position to take advantage of the cash for productive activities in both the short and long terms.

Transfer Value and Predictability

The amount of money transferred to a beneficiary household is clearly a factor in the range and intensity of impacts on productive activities. Zambia, with the higher per capita transfer, had the most consistent set of productive impacts, while Ghana, the lowest, had the least consistent set. The frequency and predictability of cash transfers are also important. At the time of their respective evaluations, operational performance varied from country to country. While in Zambia the transfers were delivered regularly throughout the evaluation period, in Ghana payments were also meant to be bi-monthly, but the schedule suffered major disruptions. The Lesotho CGP was the program with the least frequent payment schedule (quarterly), yet it was also affected by significant delays.

Messaging and information provided to beneficiaries regarding the expected use of the resources provided also likely influenced the use of resources. The Lesotho CGP had especially strong messaging on spending the money on children’s needs. Impact analysis confirmed large impacts on children’s food security and expenditures on children’s clothes, shoes, and uniforms. At the same time, in Lesotho one payment delivered five months prior to the follow-up data collection included a top-up—the Food Emergency Grant—which was delivered to cash recipients with the intent to increase agricultural production in response to a severe drought that had affected the country the previous year. The CGP evaluation could not disentangle the effect of the CGP vis-á-vis the Food Emergency Grant, but we assume that this additional cash had an immediate impact on some of the positive outcomes in agricultural activities, for instance on pesticide purchases or on homestead gardening.

The length of the evaluation period is a critical dimension in explaining impacts. For instance, the quasi-experimental approach in Zimbabwe was able to create a very robust comparison group, but the follow-up survey round occurred only 12 months after the baseline. With only six payments, it is difficult to obtain results comparable to those that similar programs achieved in two years of program implementation. Similar considerations apply for Malawi. The original design called for a follow-up survey 12 months after baseline (July/August 2013) when beneficiary households would have received 8–10 months of transfers. However, due to the delay in the start of the payment (May 2014), the followup survey was postponed until November 2014, at which time beneficiary households would have received five payments (10 months’ worth).

Conclusions

This article brings together the critical mass of evidence that has emerged from recent rigorous impact evaluations of government-run cash transfer programs in SSA. We find that cash transfers can have significant impacts on the livelihoods of beneficiary households, particularly with regard to agricultural activities, although they vary from country to country, and context to context. In Zambia, the CG program activated a transformative process, leading to a stronger engagement of beneficiary households in capital investment (e.g., agricultural tools and inputs, livestock) for agricultural production and new economic activities. The impacts in Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, and Zimbabwe were more selective in nature, while the LEAP program in Ghana had fewer direct impacts on productive activities, and more on various dimensions of risk management.

In most countries we have constantly found a reduction in the supply of casual agricultural wage labor, which is often seen as a refuge sector to access liquidity, where poor households work to survive or hedge against agricultural risk. In Ghana and Zambia this reduction in casual wage labor has been offset by an increase in on-farm family labor, and in Zambia also in off-farm work. There is no evidence that cash transfers translated into an overall reduction of labor supply or work effort—in fact quite the opposite: the transfers were used to improve household income-generating activities. The cash transfers contributed to a higher proportion of beneficiary households investing in livestock and on diverse types of animals in Malawi and Zambia, while impacts were concentrated on small ruminants in Kenya and Zimbabwe and on pigs in Lesotho. With respect to informal cash and in-kind private transfers and remittances, generally we did not observe a crowding-out effect induced by the cash transfers. In fact, positive impacts were found on informal transfers and sharing arrangements made within the communities, especially around food and agricultural inputs. These results are consistent with the story that emerged from qualitative fieldwork regarding the re-engagement of beneficiaries with local social networks of reciprocity ( Fisher et al. 2017 ).

Mixed results were found in other areas related to rural income-generating activities. The cash transfer programs in Lesotho and Zambia, and to a lesser extent in Malawi, brought about significant and positive impacts on agricultural production through greater input purchases and/or use. However, results in other countries are more nuanced. Similarly, cash transfer programs increased non-farm business opportunities in Zambia and Zimbabwe, while significant impacts did not emerge in the other countries. Impacts on the engagement of children in work activities are also not uniform.

The differences in impacts across countries can be attributed to a variety of factors, including the availability of labor given the demographic profile of beneficiary households and program design and implementation features. The level of transfers, the predictability of payments, and the type of messaging associated with the disbursement appear to be critical factors that can be managed by program implementers to facilitate economic impacts. Transfers that are lumpy by design but regular may be spent on productive investment, and at the same time can still facilitate consumption smoothing. Further, timing of payment would matter a great deal if designed to support both production and consumption, as this should consider both cycles in agricultural production and access to food throughout the year. The adequacy of the transfer is important; if giving cash is intended to have productive impacts, transfers must be large enough to enable ultrapoor households to make meaningful investments without compromising basic consumption needs.

The strongest and most consistent impacts are found in Zambia, which had all the stars aligned—a robust evaluation design, labor availability, sufficiently large and predictable payments, light messaging, and a local economic context where the key household-level constraint appeared to be liquidity.

Overall, while cash transfer programs have clear implications for beneficiary livelihoods, these do not seem to be sufficient to sustainably move households out of poverty. Poor households in rural areas, which in the absence of labor markets are largely responsible for generating their own income through household farm and non-farm activities, face multiple constraints in terms of generating sustainable livelihoods. Cash transfers and other social protection measures have proven successful at reducing hunger and poverty, in meeting basic consumption needs, and as we have shown in this article, reducing some of the market failures faced by the smallholder farmers benefiting from the programs. However, cash transfers cannot address all of these constraints. Agricultural interventions, for example, can promote growth in smallholder productivity by addressing structural constraints that social protection cannot address and that limit poor households’ access to land and water resources, inputs, financial services, advisory services, and markets. Other non-agricultural livelihood programs can help rural households diversify incomegenerating activities. The challenge is to strengthen the productive potential of beneficiary households, both in the agricultural and non-agricultural sector, without distorting the original objectives of the programs. Together, livelihood and social protection programs are needed to transform the livelihoods of the rural poor and strengthen agricultural and rural development.

Supplementary Material

Acknowledgments:

The research presented in this article has been carried out under the auspices of the “From Protection to Production” (PtoP) project, a collaborative effort of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The project has received funding from the DFID Research and Evidence Division, the European Union through the “Improved Global Governance for Hunger Reduction Programme” and the FAO Regular Fund. We would like to thank: two anonymous reviewers and the journal editor, who have provided excellent comments and significantly contributed to the improvement of the article; Alejandro Grinspun, Fabio Veras Soares and Marco Knowles for technical review of previous drafts; Ervin Prifti and Noemi Pace for their useful suggestions and comments; participants at the following conferences and workshops: 2017 APPAM International Conference, Brussels; 2016 Transfer Project workshop, Addis Ababa; 2016 IFAD-3IE Designing and implementing high-quality, policy-relevant impact evaluations, Rome; 2015 SASPEN Conference on Social Protection, Johannesburg; 2015 Global Food Security Conference, Ithaca; 2014 IPEA International Seminar “Social protection, entrepreneurship and labor market activation - Evidence for better policies”, Brasilia; 2014 University of Florence, Department of Economics & Management Seminars, Florence; 2014 Africa Community of Practice (CoP) on Conditional Cash Transfers and Cash Transfers; 2014 African Union Expert Consultation on Children and Social Protection Systems, Cape Town; 2014 IDS Graduation and Social Protection Conference, Kigali. All mistakes and omissions are our own. We would also like to remember Josh Dewbre, a founding member of the PtoP team, who passed away in April 2015, who had participated in the fieldwork and in the analysis of several programmes included in this study. All mistakes and omissions are our own.

1 See, for instance, contrasting evidence from the impact evaluation of the South African Old Age Pension program from Bertrand, Mullainathan, and Miller (2003) and Ardington, Case, and Hosegood (2009) .

2 We do not consider effects on health and schooling as productive, though human capital accumulation tend to have a tangible result, especially in the long term.

3 In Zambia, the transfer amount increased from 55,000 old Zambian Kwacha (ZMK) to 60 new Kwacha (ZMW). Between the two surveys, the rebasing was introduced at a rate of 1,000 ZMK = 1 ZMW. In Kenya, the increase in transfer size took place after the 2011 follow-up survey and it was meant, as in Zambia, to deal with the negative effects of inflation.

4 In appendix A of the online supplementary material , we graphically show the transfer size as a share of household consumption.

5 In appendix A of the online supplementary material , we provide a visual representation of the payment frequency in the countries where we had access to administrative data.

6 Due to some limitations in the evaluation design and in program implementation, in Ethiopia a non-parametric PSM approach has been implemented instead of a DiD estimation.

7 The 38.87 kg overall impact on the quantity of harvested maize increases up to 62.35 kg for labor-unconstrained households, while the overall 9.82 kg impact on sorghum reaches 22.74 kg and 49.32 kg for moderately and severely labor-constrained households, respectively.

8 Daidone et al. (2018) argue that data were collected at both baseline and follow-up during or right after the harvest of main cereals. This is therefore one explanation as to why we observe a small share of households selling their crops. Moreover, these results would not be surprising for two main reasons: ( a ) high levels of food insecurity affecting the beneficiary households, who therefore need to consume the harvested crops at home; ( b ) difficulty accessing markets because of remoteness, lack of transport, and roads.

9 See Pace et al. (2018) for a complete analysis of the synergies/complementarities between the SCT and the FISP in Malawi.

10 Livestock accumulation in rural settings is often considered a risk-coping strategy, a second-best means for precautionary savings. Therefore, an increase in livestock rearing can also be seen as a means to overcome barriers in the access to insurance and credit markets. In these evaluation surveys it is not possible to differentiate when livestock accumulation represents a source of precautionary savings compared to when it represents increases in productive investments.

11 A full list of p-values and adjusted p-values for all outcomes and countries is available in appendix F of the online supplementary material .

Supplementary material are available at American Journal of Agricultural Economics online.

Contributor Information

Silvio Daidone, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.

Benjamin Davis, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.

Sudhanshu Handa, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

Paul Winters, Associate Vice-President of the Strategy and Knowledge Department International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Rome, Italy.

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 15 April 2013

Social acceptability and perceived impact of a community-led cash transfer programme in Zimbabwe

• Morten Skovdal 1 ,
• Phyllis Mushati 2 ,
• Laura Robertson 3 ,
• Shungu Munyati 2 ,
• Lorraine Sherr 4 ,
• Constance Nyamukapa 2 , 3 &
• Simon Gregson 2 , 3  

BMC Public Health volume  13 , Article number:  342 ( 2013 ) Cite this article

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Cash transfer programmes are increasingly recognised as promising and scalable interventions that can promote the health and development of children. However, concerns have been raised about the potential for cash transfers to contribute to social division, jealousy and conflict at a community level. Against this background, and in our interest to promote community participation in cash transfer programmes, we examine local perceptions of a community-led cash transfer programme in Eastern Zimbabwe.

We collected and analysed data from 35 individual interviews and three focus group discussions, involving 24 key informants (community committee members and programme implementers), 24 cash transfer beneficiaries, of which four were youth, and 14 non-beneficiaries. Transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis and coding to generate concepts.

Study participants described the programme as participatory, fair and transparent – reducing the likelihood of jealousy. The programme was perceived to have had a substantial impact on children’s health and education, primarily through aiding parents and guardians to better cater for their children’s needs. Moreover, participants alluded to the potential of the programme to facilitate more transformational change, for example by enabling families to invest money in assets and income generating activities and by promoting a community-wide sense of responsibility for the support of orphaned and vulnerable children.

Community participation, combined with the perceived impact of the cash transfer programme, led community members to speak enthusiastically about the programme. We conclude that community-led cash transfer programmes have the potential to open up for possibilities of participation and community agency that enable social acceptability and limit social divisiveness.

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Cash transfers are increasingly used in sub-Saharan Africa as a social protection instrument to address poverty and improve the health and well-being of children living in poor resource and high HIV prevalence areas. Small amounts of cash given to poor households on a regular and predictable (often monthly or bi-monthly) basis allow for control, independence and decision making [ 1 , 2 ]. However, cash transfers, which target some households and not others, can misfire and lead to conflict, jealousy and other unintended consequences. It is against this background that we explore community perceptions of a community-led cash transfer programme in Zimbabwe and discuss the role of community participation in contributing to the acceptability of cash transfers, reducing the risk of unintended consequences, and meeting programme objectives.

Conditional cash transfers gained popularity in South America where long-standing programmes have demonstrated their success through significant improvements in access to education, food security, child health and growth [ 2 – 6 ]. In addition to highlighting significant health impacts, studies from the region have also indicated the potential of cash transfers to undermine local coping strategies [ 7 ] as well as reinforcing gender roles and responsibilities in managing the impact of poverty [ 8 – 11 ].

Nonetheless, inspired by the potential of cash transfers in South America, in 2006, the African Union spearheaded ‘The Livingstone Call for Action’, which brought together Ministers and senior government officials from 13 African countries to discuss the role of cash transfers. The meeting firmly established cash transfers as a viable and promising social protection strategy for Africa. As such, a number of sub-Saharan African countries have begun to design, implement and scale-up cash transfer programmes (see for examples, [ 12 , 13 ]).

The early experiences of unconditional cash transfer programmes in sub-Saharan Africa have been succinctly discussed by Adato and Bassett [ 14 ] in their review of published evaluations. They found several positive effects of unconditional cash transfers, including improved nutritional status of children (Malawi, South Africa and Zambia), reduced reports of illness amongst children (Malawi and Zambia) and increased school enrolment and attendance (Ethiopia, South Africa, Zambia and Malawi). More recently, a conditional cash transfer programme in Malawi observed significant reductions in risky sexual behaviour, early marriage and pregnancy amongst young women aged 13–22 years [ 15 ]. Our own study in Zimbabwe found cash transfers to i) increase school attendance amongst orphaned and vulnerable children; ii) increase birth registration of children in households receiving conditional cash transfers; and iii) to have no significant effect on vaccination uptake [ 16 ].

Although current evaluations of cash transfer programmes in sub-Saharan Africa indicate great potential, MacAusland and Riemenschneider [ 17 ] argue that the evaluation studies that dominate the cash transfer literature are too focused on ‘material’ and health gains, with less attention given to changes in the ‘relational’ and ‘symbolic’ dimensions that shape the social landscape in which cash transfer programmes are located. Social studies have sought to fill this gap by raising questions about the socio-ethical implications of cash transfers. For example, studies in Africa have reported on conflict and jealousy arising from the divisiveness of some households being targeted whilst others are not, even though they are all considered poor [ 17 , 18 ]. An in-depth study of female cash transfer recipients in South Africa found that although cash transfers provided women with a valuable safety net, helping them to cope with poverty and domestic obligations [ 19 ], these women also felt labelled as poor, stigmatised as lazy, and experienced shame through their association a cash transfer programme transfer [ 20 ]. Similar observations have been made in Kenya where cash transfer recipients deliberately kept their status as cash transfer recipients a secret out of fear of public opinion [ 21 ]. Such studies suggest that cash transfer programmes often fail to adequately resonate with local norms and structures, but provide us with few clues as to how we can create a better fit between local norms and structures and the very nature of cash transfers (i.e. some households receive a regular income whilst others do not) to achieve more widespread social acceptability – buy-in from community members – and in the process overcome potential unintended consequences.

In this paper we use qualitative data to explore community member’s experiences of a community-led cash transfer programme in Manicaland, eastern Zimbabwe. More specifically, we examine their perspectives on how participatory the programme was and how this in turn, combined with their perceived impact of the programme, helped achieve social acceptability. We hope that our partial focus on the implementation process, and lessons learned from embedding the cash transfer programme into a community context, provides useful insights to how cash transfer programmes can pay more attention to possibilities of participation and community agency, and thereby be more aligned with local realities, achieve social acceptability and meet programme objectives.

This qualitative study forms part of a larger cluster-randomised trial of a cash transfer programme in eastern Zimbabwe. Ethical approval for the trial and this study was granted by the Imperial College Research Ethics Committee (ICREC_9_3_10), the Biomedical Research and Training Institute’s Institutional Review Board (AP81/09), and the Medical Research Council of Zimbabwe (MRCZ/A/1518). Informed and written consent was obtained from all participants upon the agreement that confidentiality would be ensured. We have therefore used pseudonyms throughout.

Study location and the cash transfer programme

Zimbabwe has, over the past decade, experienced one of the world’s most severe HIV epidemics and a period of rapid economic decline. The combination of these two factors has led to a dramatic increase in the number of orphaned and other vulnerable children. Although Zimbabwe has seen a decline in HIV prevalence since the late 1990s (e.g., from 29.3% in 1997 to 15.6% in 2007) – fuelled by declines in risk behaviours and partner reductions [ 22 , 23 ] – a large number of people continue to experience the devastating effects of poverty and HIV. It is estimated that, with around 1.6 million children in Zimbabwe having lost one or both parents due to HIV and other causes, one out of four children, and the homes in which they are living, are in need of social protection [ 24 ]. In Manicaland Province where this study takes place, our own surveys indicate that 20.8% of children (data collected 2003/05) are orphaned [ 25 , 26 ]. Responding to the social protection needs of children in Zimbabwe, the Department of Social Services developed The National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children Phase II, 2011–2015 , prioritising cash transfers as a key strategy for the social protection of orphaned and vulnerable children.

The community-randomised cash transfer trial that we report on in this paper began in July 2009 across 30 communities in Manicaland. The programme was community-led and directed. Its design was informed by findings from a feasibility study conducted with a consultancy (Development Data), which asked local people and stakeholders about the desirability of a cash transfer programme and possible design features. Drawing on recommendations from the feasibility study, key entry points and implementation mechanisms through which the cash transfer programme could provide opportunities for community participation were identified. As a result, and through consultation with local leadership (village heads), it was agreed that the best way forward was to administer the programme through community-based Cash Transfer Committees (CTCs). To establish these committees, each community was divided into five areas, or villages, and the person from each village getting most votes was elected to become a member of the local community committee. It was the responsibility of the committee members to mobilise local villages within the community, facilitate village meetings to discuss and verify who was eligible to benefit from the programme, facilitate parenting skills classes as well as assist with cash distributions and the verification of compliance with conditions. Cash disbursements were made at pay-points in central locations in each community and facilitated by CTC members.

The communities were assigned to one of three study groups: control, cash transfers, or conditional cash transfers. The conditions required for the conditional cash transfer group were obtaining birth certificates, keeping children up-to-date with vaccinations and attending a growth-monitoring clinic twice a year, keeping school attendance above 90% of days each month, and attending parenting-skills classes. Eligible households were identified through a two-stage process (see also [ 27 ]). First, data from our population-based household survey were used to generate lists of eligible households. Beneficiaries had to be in the poorest quintile at baseline, host one or more orphaned children, be child-headed or contain a chronically ill or disabled household member. The lists of eligible households (according to the household survey) were taken to the communities for discussion and verification. This process helped us to identify a total of 2,844 households in the 20 ‘cash transfer’ communities of which 1,525 received unconditional cash transfers and 1,319 received conditional cash transfers. There were a further 1,199 households in the 10 control communities. Between January 2011 and January 2012, the targeted households received bi-monthly grants of US$18 plus an extra US$4 per child living in the household (up to a maximum of three children). The cash transfer programme was funded by the Programme of Support for the Zimbabwe National Action Plan for OVC and implemented in a partnership between the Biomedical Research and Training Institute, Catholic Relief Services in Zimbabwe, and the Diocese of Mutare Community Care Program.

Study participants and sampling

This evaluation reports on the perspectives of 58 adults and 4 youth (aged 14–21 years) who participated in 35 structured interviews and three focus group discussions. To gather a broad range of perspectives, community members with varying degrees of involvement were invited to participate in the study. As detailed in Table  1 , the study participants included 24 key informants (community committee members and programme implementers), 24 direct beneficiaries of the conditional (5 adults and 3 youth) and unconditional (15 adults and 1 youth) cash transfer arms and 14 non-beneficiaries. Participants were randomly selected from a list of programme stakeholders and recruited by Shona-speaking researchers from the Biomedical Research and Training Institute in consultation with community guides.

Data collection and analysis

All interviews, except for one interview that was conducted in English, were conducted in the local Shona language by experienced qualitative researchers. A topic guide was developed to explore the perspectives of beneficiaries, local stakeholders and community members at large. Topics covered by the interview guides included: how the programme was implemented, local understandings of the programme, cash spending, conditions, changes the programme had instigated, impact and local barriers to programme success. Youth were interviewed using the same topic guide, but by a research assistant with specialised social worker training pertaining to the challenges of doing research with children and youth (see for example [ 28 ]). The individual interviews lasted an average of 40 minutes, whilst the group interviews took an average of 94 minutes. The interviews were translated and transcribed into English and imported into a qualitative software package (Atlas.Ti) for coding and more in-depth examination. As we seek to report on more general perceptions of the programme, we did not aim to make links between participants from the three design groups (conditional cash transfer, unconditional cash transfer or control groups) and their individualised personal experiences, but rather to map the more general feeling of the programme as a whole. As such, the entire data corpus constitutes our unit of analysis rather than separate datasets for the different design groups.

The analysis involved a stage-wise process that was open for both a priori reasoning and surprises. The first step involved us reading and coding the transcripts. A total of 90 codes were generated from this process. However, as we do not seek to report on all the themes emerging from our qualitative analysis in this paper, but to explore community members’ perceptions of the programme, we only report on the 38 codes that have direct relevance to the topic of this paper (see Table  2 ). These codes were subsequently subjected to a thematic network analysis [ 29 ], involving the grouping together of codes into basic themes, which were subsequently grouped into higher order and more interpretative organising themes. This process, as well as analysing all the transcripts together, allowed us to map out some of the more prevalent experiences and perceptions as reported by the informants. As shown in Table  2 , a total of six organising themes emerged from this analysis, giving us an insight to how community members in this context experienced a community-led cash transfer programme. We will now explore these six themes by systematically discussing the 14 basic themes emerging from our analysis.

Community participation

An integral part of the cash transfer programme was to mobilise community-based committees and enable them to lead the implementation process. This intrinsic recognition of having to involve community members in the programme implementation was generally appreciated. One community leader went so far as to say that the success of the programme was down to how “it valued people’s input” and “drew from the local way of doing things”. Community members were involved in different ways and at different levels. Village (Kraal) heads were consulted in the planning stages and for programme approval. Village heads were vital for the mobilisation of the communities and organising community meetings. In this regard, a number of sensitisation meetings were held to inform community members about the programme. It was at one of those meetings that the community-based Cash Transfer Committees (CTCs) were democratically established.

“We were gathered village by village and we were told to write down the names of people we wanted to get in the committee.” Tadiwa, female, caregiver benefiting from cash transfers

A key responsibility of the CTCs was to facilitate village meetings and to discuss and verify who was eligible to benefit from the programme. In this process, the wider community was involved, drawing on local experiences and knowledge. The informants commented on the importance of drawing on local knowledge, exemplified by one community member:

“They used local knowledge in selecting the deserving households. It was done well.” Raviro, male, community member

As explained earlier, CTCs were also charged with the responsibility of overseeing progress and payment, monitoring compliance of cash transfer beneficiaries who had been assigned conditions, as well as facilitating parenting skills classes. Our CTC informants described their commitment and engagement with their overseeing role:

“Our roles were to tell people two weeks before receiving their money and to see if those receiving money are supposed to receive, observe if the money is being used appropriately, also monitor if they have paid the children’s school fees and whether the children are in school, we also check if children have been vaccinated at the clinic. These were our roles and responsibilities.” Rufaro, female, CTC member

Numerous informants spoke about the importance of using local knowledge and insight to identify, target and work with vulnerable households. But the notion of ‘local’ also encompassed their close proximity, making them better at monitoring and responding to problems in a timely and apt manner.

“It helped these families because I was near them and I was familiar with their problems since we lived in the same community. If a problem arose I would let my boss know, it helped them so much.” Ndura, female, CTC member

Community meetings about the programme ensured transparency and enabled community members to take an informal role in the programme. As a result, the CTCs were not alone in monitoring how cash was spent. Community members encouraged cash transfer beneficiaries to spend their money responsibly and in a way that met the objectives of the programme.

“We don’t want to see people wasting this money. That money should be spent effectively. People would say this to those people who receive the money. This is not said with harsh words but in a nice way to encourage people to be more responsible.” Shamu, male, community member

As indicated above, cash transfer beneficiaries, village heads, elected community leaders and community members in general worked together in taking this programme forward. The above quotes exemplify how the community members endorsed the implementation process (selection, overseeing, keeping tabs) and the outcome of their involvement (responsible spending). These observations indicate how cash transfer programmes, through their very design of recognising and drawing of local resources, can be embedded into a social context. In addition to appropriating the programme to ‘the local way of doing things’, it also meant that fewer ‘outsiders’ had to be paid to help with the implementation of the programme.

Social acceptability

Social acceptability is an important element of any development programme targeting some households and not others. Achieving fairness and overcoming jealousy was often mentioned by the informants as important, highlighting a worry that the cash transfer programme could lead to social divisions. However, it was generally agreed that the programme was fair and two programme features were highlighted as contributing to people’s judgement of the fairness of the programme. First, the process of involving available and interested community members in the verification and selection of beneficiaries was said to reduce the chances of people feeling jealous.

“It relied on the community to select beneficiaries and that helps reduce the probability of anyone feeling jealous against the beneficiaries.” Rindi, male, CTC member

“It was good. I was actually impressed to see people from my community getting organised. It showed that people just need to be given a platform to be constructive. Nobody took it personally, even if their name was called out and people would say no. Nobody really showed being offended. We all even enjoyed the exercise.” Anopa, male, CTC member

Second, the process was seen as transparent, which proved to be an important pathway to achieving fairness and community ownership.

“Because people really felt they were part of everything and they felt this was a very transparent way of doing things.” Rindi, male, CTC member

“The community liked the meetings. They showed a lot of fairness, and enhanced community ownership” Zira, male, representative from implementing agency

There was an overwhelming consensus that the programme, through community participation and transparency, had been successful in overcoming widespread jealousy and feelings of unfairness about how beneficiaries were selected. Other factors contributed to social acceptability, including a community-wide appreciation for what the programme set out to achieve: support vulnerable households.

“The whole community was happy about the programme because it developed the benefitting households in the community.” Raviro, male, community member

“You may be concerned about your neighbour’s child. You might feel pity, and want them to go to school, but cannot help financially. Then if someone comes to help the family, you become happy. ” Dova, female, caregiver benefitting from conditional cash transfers

The quotes by Raviro and Dova are indicative of the kind of empathy that characterises this rural area of Zimbabwe, and highlight more widespread benefits that go above and beyond the targeted household. Indeed, a number of informants spoke about how the programme had a positive impact on neighbours, extended family members and the community at large, taking some of the responsibility away from them to support vulnerable members of their community/family.

“People were happy because it reduced the load on their shoulders.” Daya, female, CTC member

In what ways was the programme perceived to benefit community members?

Improved schooling and education

Although primary education is free in Zimbabwe, a growing number of schools are forced to charge pupils school development levies and tuition fees to uphold the standard of education. These fees, coupled with school-related costs such as uniforms, books, pens and paper, make primary education costly for the poorest families. As such, and with a focus on children’s education, the cash transfer programme was received positively, helping parents and guardians to cover the educational needs of their children. The cash transfers were said to have a positive impact on children’s school attendance and performance. For example, Bastirai, a 14-year-old boy who benefitted from the cash transfer programme claimed that the programme enabled both him and his siblings to pay for school development levies and tuition fees, attend school more regularly, wear new uniforms, and perform better in school. He told us that the programme had made a difference to their lives.

“We paid for my school fees and my other sibling’s school fees. We also bought some uniforms. […] Our performance has changed for the better. We used to be sent away and miss a lot of lessons. Now we are attending all lessons so things have changed for the better.” Bastirai, 14-year-old boy benefiting from cash transfers

His account is corroborated by Noah, a CTC member, who was of the impression that the programme contributed to improvements in schooling and education and that these perceived improvements were amongst the greatest achievements of the cash transfer programme.

“The most significant change is that those children who were not attending school are now attending school […] Children are now going to school looking smart.” Noah, male, CTC member

The notion of children looking smart was mentioned frequently. Children from the poorest families were, through the cash transfers, believed to visually ‘escape’ representations of poverty. There was a perception that now children were able to wear shoes, replace old and torn uniforms, and this had made them more equal to their peers and difficult to pinpoint as poor. Illustrating this ‘escape’ from poverty, one CTC member claimed that ‘now the rich and the poor are all the same’, another member said ‘the programme has brought equality to the community.’

Many guardians of households benefitting from cash transfers spoke about how they could pay the school levies and tuition fees promptly, sparing them and their children from harassment from school administrators. The ability of poor families to pay fees promptly was noticed by a school leader who felt that the programme enabled them to arrange and plan school activities better.

“There is a noticeable change. We do not see children being disturbed by being sent back home to collect their levies because they are being paid up in time plus we do not have a single drop out […] we can say most or 100% of the pupils in a class have pens and paper. So we do not have any pupil who comes to sit doing nothing or not writing… When school term started this year I noticed a difference because when we requested the levies, pupils just made the payments. So in a matter of two weeks the levies were paid up. This was unusual, we used to stretch up to end of second term talking to parents to come and pay levies. […] It made it possible for us to do some of the projects that we wanted to do, tours and visits. We do not have any arrears” Silas, male, school leader

Although this was thought to be of benefit to the school, the same school leader also said that he had observed an increase in demand for education, forcing him to send children to other schools in order to keep the student-teacher ratio acceptable.

Improved child health and well-being

The programme was believed to have both physical and psychosocial health benefits. As a disease prevention instrument, cash transfers were believed to have enhanced vaccination rates and improved the uptake of child growth monitoring services.

“People who never used to bring their children for growth monitoring were now bringing their children for that. This is because the programme was demanding to see the child health card to check on growth monitoring and vaccinations.” Mercy, female, caregiver benefitting from conditional cash transfers

Although the cash transfer programme may have incentivised some recipients to take their children for immunisation, the programme has not had a significant effect on vaccination rates [ 16 ].

A number of examples were also given to highlight the perceived link between their increased access to money and disease prevention. Ndura, a CTC member, spoke about how the ability of poor families to now afford shoes for their children, can help prevent certain diseases contracted from soil and unhygienic floor surfaces.

“Most children now wear shoes when going to school so they are safe from the diseases found in toilets and play grounds. Also immunisation of children helped to limit diseases.” Ndura, female, CTC member

Although immunisation coverage is relatively good in Zimbabwe, the conditional cash transfer arm was believed to be particularly effective for people adhering to the Apostolic faith, whose religious beliefs prohibit them from making use of medical services. However through cash incentives and dialogue with CTC members, a number of Apostolics agreed to circumvent this rule and allowed their children to be immunised.

“Children are vaccinated in greater numbers. Before many children were not brought to the health clinic because parents said they were are in the apostolic sector. This has changed.” Zivai, female, CTC member

The cash transfers were also believed to improve the nutritional intake of children and other household members. Although the cash transfers were linked to children’s regular school attendance in the conditional cash transfer areas, it was not a requirement that households spend the actual cash transfers on school costs. If they had another source of funds for this (e.g., a relative in formal sector employment), they could continue with this arrangement. This meant that some families were in a position to divert funds and assets to improve their food intake.

“When change was left I would go and buy food so that my child eats something when going to school, I would even buy soap with the change.” Tadiwa, female, caregiver benefitting from cash transfers

“Some families have started eating healthier foods, because they could now afford cooking oil and meat here and there… some are already relying on the vegetable gardens which they started using resources from this programme. I think so much has been achieved and some people’s living standards have been raised.” Rindi, male, CTC member

The cash transfers came with a sense of security and confidence in their ability to deal with future expenditures. This meant that a number of our informants spoke about how the cash transfer programme has helped reduce levels of stress and anxiety – improving their psychosocial well-being. Bastirai explained earlier how the allocation of cash to his household managed to cover all their educational costs. This was tremendously important for him, removing worries and headaches and helping him feel more content with life.

“Last year I used to suffer from headaches because I was always thinking about my brother who was not going to school. I could not focus on my studies properly because I was troubled about my brother who will be at home and not going to school. Sometimes I would miss school and go to the bees to make some money for him to go to school. Right now I can go for 3 months without experiencing any headaches. I am now comfortable at school. I do not feel out of place.” Bastirai, 14-year-old boy benefiting from cash transfers

The psychosocial benefits of the programme were not limited to children. Also guardians expressed relief and a reduction in levels of stress as a result of having a predictable income and support in providing for their children’s education. One guardian extended this observation further by arguing that this is also a relief for the community whole, as it reduces the number of our-of-school children roaming around.

“It strengthened my family because I don’t get stressed when schools are about to open thinking about school fees. […] it has also helped the community not to worry and they are happy that I have managed to pay school fees for my children and that they will not roam around the village.” Dova, female, caregiver benefitting from conditional cash transfers

Poverty reduction and social transformation

If cash transfers are to be considered a social protection strategy, they need to move beyond a focus on health and children’s educational gains and also consider the ways they can potentially challenge and transform the social space that leaves children vulnerable. We now report on some of the transformative opportunities that can potentially arise at a micro-level from community-led cash transfer programmes.

First of all, the programme, through its involvement with whole communities, sensitised everyone to the needs and struggles of orphaned and vulnerable children and their labour-constrained guardians. The programme was believed to ‘open eyes’ and was said to spark a sense of collective action, where groups and communities got mobilised and committed to help vulnerable children.

“I think it gave people an opportunity to look at each and every household in the community and also opened our eyes to some issues that were not given much attention, like the issue of vulnerable children. People started mobilising each other to help vulnerable children.” Anopa, male, CTC member

One of the more specific areas where community members were sensitised relates to the need to obtain birth certificates. Birth certificates are a prerequisite for any young man or women in Zimbabwe to obtain an identification document that gives them full rights as citizens. Pupils sitting their final year exams and looking to obtain a diploma need to present their birth certificate. Many health and social services in Zimbabwe require a birth certificate for their services to be made available. It is therefore crucial for children to obtain official copies of their birth certificates, but this is a bureaucratic and sometimes costly (e.g., opportunity costs related to travel) process that prevents many parents and guardians from following this through. By requiring all beneficiaries to have a birth certificate, the programme helped generate a local understanding of the importance of birth certificates.

“When the programme started, people didn’t appreciate the importance of birth certificates to children and their personal national identity cards. The programme took time to explain the importance of these papers. Everyone took this seriously and made an effort to process their papers. People who didn’t have money to process the documents were given the money. I believe that even schools now will not have problems of pupils without documentation as most parents have made an effort to get these documents. After this programme, every pupil should be able to write their grade seven exams because they will all have their birth certificates.” Kokayi, male, CTC member

Second, informants argued that the programme, through its provision of cash, distinguished itself from other programmes by giving people a sense of control over their lives. It allowed people to prioritise their own needs rather than having their needs prescribed by non-governmental organisations. Through this sense of control, families were said to be able to transform their lives, with many families using their cash grants to start income generating projects.

“I learned that having paid for school fees we should use the remaining bit of money to buy seedlings and do gardening so that when the program goes you will not be left out with nothing at all.” Tadiwa, female, caregiver benefitting from cash transfers

Not everyone had enough spare money to buy farming implements. But with the programme also came a rise in informal savings and lending groups, where cash transfer beneficiaries, used their steady income as a guarantor to join a local savings and lending group to set up an income generating activity. As highlighted by Tadiwa, many people felt that this was important exit strategy of the programme. This rise in income generating activities was also noted by Shamu, a community member not benefitting from the programme.

“Definitely there has been a change because a lot of people are now involved in a lot of small projects. For example, at this centre, a lot of people are now involved in small projects. A lot of women are involved in buying and selling of clothes and milk. Some are selling tomatoes. So at least people are engaged in some income generating project. People are now making money instead of just waiting for donations. People have changed their behaviour; they are now very seriously looking for money.” Shamu, male, community member

Shamu highlights how the cash transfer programme in a rather paradoxical way has changed people’s behaviour, with recipients being focused on generating income themselves, disassociating themselves from the idea that they may be passive recipients of aid.

Third, the programme, as discussed earlier, brought a sense of social equality into the communities. By enabling children to pay for their school fees in time and avoid being sent home, they and their families avoid being ostracised as poor and vulnerable, which, according to a school leader, can have a transformative impact on children’s lives.

“Cash transfer is very effective, I wish it would continue operating, and there won’t be any difference between our children such that we will not be able to see the children who would have come from poor families. It can be very embarrassing for a child to be labelled as poor because they did not pay for their school fees. It also exposes the whole family. Such public humiliation is not good because it can make the child not reach his/her self-esteem.” Silas, male, school leader

A community member not benefiting from the programme also noted the change that had happened with people being more equal. Possibly reflecting the increased awareness of the needs of struggling families and an enhanced social solidarity in the community, she argues that the community has become more unified, with everyone interacting well with each other across social strata.

“It brought more social cohesion because some people used to suffer on their own. They did not socialize with other people because they were poor but with the coming of the programme everyone is working together, people are now interacting with everyone.” Florence, female, community member

The subjective experiences reported on in this section suggest that people felt the programme facilitated social transformation at a local level through 1) a sensitisation and mobilisation of community members on the needs of vulnerable children; 2) individual control and income generating activities; and 3) by making community members more equal.

Persisting social and logistical challenges

Whilst community members generally spoke highly about the programme, there were persisting social and logistically challenges. For example, there were some accounts of beneficiaries feeling that they were no longer greeted by some people in the community and attributed this to jealousy. Some people said that there were community members feeling disgruntled and left out, failing to understand why they have not been supported when their equally poor neighbour has. This however was not surprising to the informants.

“It is common for people to be jealous. When you are getting something and they are not, it will compromise the cohesion of the community; they will be jealous and question why they were left out?” Anashe, female, caregiver benefitting from cash transfers

“Where there are people there will always be jealousy. There are people who are naturally jealous and there are people who are not jealous. I however have never heard of people who have said they are jealous. People believe that the people who were selected were the deserving households.” Raviro, male, community member

So whilst the programme did not completely eradicate jealousy, informants spoke about how feelings of jealousy changed over time, arguing that people eventually got used to the idea that some community members, and not others, received money from an external organisation.

“Jealousy was there in the beginning but now people seem to be getting along well with each other.” Ruko, male, community member

Adding to the phenomenon of jealousy was the question of targeting. A number of examples emerged from the interviews where people expressed the concern that the targeting and selection process had bypassed deserving households, and included households that perhaps were not as deserving.

“There are families we feel they should have been included, for example, there is a family with a very old women, who spends the whole day in the garden and is surviving on selling vegetables, but she has 3–4 orphans” Tongo, female, caregiver benefitting from cash transfers

We have discussed the challenges of targeting elsewhere [ 27 ]. Logistical challenges also deserve mentioning, both to give us an insight to some of the challenges that the CTCs were confronted with and to enable future programme planners to recognise and overcome these challenges. At the household level, illness and disability, as well as dysfunctional family dynamics presented difficulties to reaching some of the most vulnerable children. 14-year-old Bastirai gives an example of how his sick father had struggled to pick up the cash grants from the pay-point. He also spoke about how the CTCs responded to the difficulties experienced by his dad by eventually allowing a representative to go and collect the money on his behalf.

“My father used to go and collect the money but after collecting the money he would come back and complain that his leg was in pain. He would spend five days sleeping after that. Those days the people would say you cannot send representatives to get the money on your behalf.” Bastirai, 14-year-old boy benefiting from cash transfers

Another frequently mentioned problem expressed by our informants was the irresponsible use of cash grants by men. Men were often reported as unsympathetic to the needs of children in their care and more interested in their own personal needs. One male CTC member brought this up in a focus group discussion with other CTC members who agreed to challenge.

“There are some men in the community who had difficulties in understanding the programme. These men do not work they just stay at home. So when the money came they took the money used it to meet their own needs instead of using it for the benefit of their children. Instead of paying for school fees and buying uniforms, the men went drinking and paid off their own debts.” Kokayi, male, CTC member

CTC members also had to respond to changes in household composition. Divorce and migration meant that some families were split up, leaving parents, or indeed other caregivers, to fight for the child, partially motivated by the cash grants.

“In that in a family perhaps it might cause discontent in a household like where I almost observed where a mother would have been divorced from the father and she gets the money while staying away from the father it caused a lot of problems because the father wants the money and the mother wants the money so they will be fighting for the child even others who are not fathers, grandmothers and other relatives if they know that that family is getting money through the child they will start fighting for the child. There are quite a number of such cases.” Kuda, male, representative from implementing agency

Some CTC members had to ensure compliance to conditions in the conditional cash transfer communities. This included encouraging parents to take their children for vaccinations. However, Apostolic parents refused to take their children to the hospital on religious grounds, requiring CTC members to act as their compliance buddies and engage in a dialogue encouraging them to take their child for vaccination. Sometimes they were successful, other times not.

“There were people in the Apostolic sect who were adamant saying we are not allowed by our religion to our children for vaccinations. We would engage them in a discussion and, in the end, you see the child being taken for vaccinations.” Dzingai, male, CTC member

It is clear that social divisiveness cannot be completely overcome and that many logistical issues, some unavoidable (e.g., divorce and family break-ups), still present significant challenges to the implementation of cash transfer programmes.

This paper has examined local perceptions of a community-led cash transfer programme in eastern Zimbabwe. More specifically, the paper explored their experiences of participating in the programme and its impact on children and the communities at large. Community participation was said to ensure the programme resonated with local knowledge systems, norms and structures. Community members, through village meetings and community-based cash transfer committees, felt they were given the opportunity to draw on local knowledge and resources to select, support and monitor cash transfer beneficiaries. Community members thus respected the programme. They recognised that the way the programme was implemented made the selection process fair and transparent – enabling collective ownership of the programme and limiting, not eradicating, social divisiveness. They were sympathetic to what the programme sought to do and recognised the different ways the programme benefitted poor households. For example, people felt that the greatest impact of the programme pertained to improvements in children’s school attendance and performance. Prompt payment of school fees and children being given new school uniforms meant that children were not sent home from school, allowing them to concentrate on their studies. The programme was also perceived to have had noteworthy influences on the physical and psychosocial health of children. People were of the belief that the increase in income meant that children had access to more nutritious food. More children were also said to be taken for vaccinations and growth monitoring at the local health clinic – although the measured effect of cash transfers on vaccination uptake was not statistically significant [ 16 ]. The programme was also said to come as a relief for children and their guardians, removing worries and reducing levels of stress. These benefits have also been noted by cash transfer beneficiaries in Malawi [ 30 ]. The programme was also believed to provide beneficiaries and the communities with opportunities for social transformation. At a household-level, although this may not be particular to community-led cash transfer programmes, some guardians spoke of how the programme had enabled them to set up small-scale income generating activities, transforming their livelihoods by strengthening household assets. Moreover, social sanctions arising from the transparency and involvement of community members were observed to encourage household recipients to take an active role in distancing themselves from being passive recipients of aid, to agents of change who work for a brighter future of their children. At a community-level, the programme was said to sensitise community members to the needs of orphaned and vulnerable children and fostered a sense of collective action for programme success. The programme was said to address social inequalities – creating more unified and socially cohesive community contexts.

There were also examples of the limitations and complexity of involving communities. Communities are made up of complex webs of power relations and interests that result in some people, often the most vulnerable, being excluded and ostracised. Jealousy was therefore not eradicated and we heard of examples of how some undeserving households were included in the beneficiary list at the expense of more deserving households. There was also an acknowledgement of how some of the local structures and dynamics may have had a negative impact on the programme, such as the role of religion (in this case Apostolics), dysfunctional family relations, illness and disability, and the conflicting priorities of some men.

This paper does not seek to draw causal relationships. For example, we cannot say for certain that community participation led to social acceptability. However, the perspectives presented in this exploratory study do suggest that such a link may indeed be possible. In contrasts with observations of social divisiveness from other cash transfer initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa e.g., [ 17 , 18 ], the programme we report on appears to have had some level of buy-in from community members, particularly from those who participated in this study. Relatedly, people felt generally happy about the programme, expressing their positive impressions of the impact that the programme had on beneficiary households and the community at large. More research however is needed to determine factors and prerequisites for social acceptability.

Adato and Bassett [ 14 ] in their asset-based social protection framework reduce the role of cash transfers to protective (secure basic needs) and preventative (avert asset reduction) effects. This rather limited role of cash transfers has sparked debate on how cash transfers can be more transformative [e.g., [ 31 , 32 ]. Our experiences suggest that cash transfers, if directed by community members, can, using the same language as the framework proposed by Adato and Bassett (2009), be promotional (enable people to save and accumulate assets) and transformational (create supportive social environments). Similar observations have been made in Kenya through community-based capital cash transfers [ 33 , 34 ].

A couple of key limitations deserve mentioning. First, we were not in a position to draw links between personal accounts and their unique context. A limitation of this paper is therefore that it does not present a fine-grained analysis of differences between communities receiving conditional or unconditional cash transfers, or whether the communities are located in roadside settlements, near forestry plantations or in subsistence farming areas. Second, our findings suggest an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards the programme. Whilst this may be the case, there is also the risk that there could be some reporting bias in the paper, with participants, in the hope of continued support, deliberately communicating positive aspects of the programme.

Conclusions

Notwithstanding these limitations, we conclude that community-led cash transfer initiatives have the potential to open up possibilities for community participation and agency, and thereby can be more aligned with local realities, that make it possible to achieve social acceptability, facilitate more transformational change, and enable people, both those who benefit directly and those who do not, to see the benefits of the programme.

Authors' information

At the time of the study, MS was with the Department of Health Promotion and Development, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. He is now with Save the Children UK, London, UK. PM and SM are with the Biomedical Research and Training Institute (BRTI), Harare, Zimbabwe. LR is with the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College, London, UK. LS is with the Department of Infection and Population Health, University College London, London, UK. CN and SG are with the BRTI and the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College, London, UK.

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Acknowledgements

Biomedical Research and Training Institute (Godwin Chawira, Sheila Dauka, Bekezela Hlomula, Claudius Madanhire, Phyllis Magoge, Charles Mangongera, Shungu Munyati, Gladys Muyambo, Stewart Rupende, Albert Takaruza), Catholic Relief Services (Lovemore Dumba, Nomthandazo Jones, Farai Makwanya, Washington Masikati, Gideon Mavise, Tendai Mrewanhema, Alexion Mudondo), Development Data (Busisiwe Moyo), Diocese of Mutare Community Care Programme (Jeremiah Makoni, Shakespeare Mabhunu, Fanuel Nyatsuro, Samuel Sithole), Imperial College London (Jeffrey Eaton, Geoff Garnett, Christina Schumacher), Partnership for Child Development (Lesley Drake), Zimbabwe Department of Social Services (Ruth Utete), UNICEF (Sue Laver, Roeland Monasch), World Bank (Francisco Ayala, Don Bundy, Marito Garcia). The preparation of this paper would not have been possible without the generous funding from Wellcome Trust, Partnership for Child Development and the Norwegian Research Council. Finally we would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the communities and study participants for their time and contribution to this study.

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Department of Health Promotion and Development, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Morten Skovdal

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Phyllis Mushati, Shungu Munyati, Constance Nyamukapa & Simon Gregson

School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK

Laura Robertson, Constance Nyamukapa & Simon Gregson

Department of Infection and Population Health, University College London, London, UK

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MS managed the data set, performed the data analysis, and drafted the manuscript. PM organised the field team that collected and transcribed the data and conducted some of the interviews. LR designed the overarching cash transfer trial and participated in the design of this sub-study. SM participated in the design and implementation of the programme. LS participated in the design of the study. CN managed the research and supervised data collection. SG conceived and oversaw the development and conduct of the cash transfer trial including this sub-study. All authors contributed to the final write-up and have read and approved the final manuscript.

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Skovdal, M., Mushati, P., Robertson, L. et al. Social acceptability and perceived impact of a community-led cash transfer programme in Zimbabwe. BMC Public Health 13 , 342 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-342

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-342

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Rigorously evaluating cash transfer programs in the United States: Considerations, challenges, and future research questions

Cash transfer interventions—cash payments that can be one-time or recurring, conditional or unconditional, and direct or indirect—are gaining more attention worldwide. In September 2023, researchers conducting randomized evaluations of cash transfer programs in the United States gathered at Duke University to discuss their ongoing and completed research projects. They shared common challenges regarding measuring outcomes, implementing and designing cash transfer programs, and communicating about results to the public. In this post, we highlight key takeaways from these conversations.

Due to their demonstrated effectiveness in low- and middle-income countries , cash transfer programs have received growing attention from researchers and policymakers in the United States. Several dozen pilots or studies have emerged nationwide to assess the impacts of these programs. Some fall under a broad endeavor to understand the effects of guaranteed income (e.g., The Cook County Promise Guaranteed Income Pilot ), while others deploy cash as an intervention within existing safety net systems or as an approach to understand the impacts of poverty reduction (e.g., Baby's First Years ). While each study employs a different design (e.g., one-time versus recurring payment) and target population, numerous lessons can be learned by looking across this body of work domestically and abroad. 

Understanding ongoing and completed studies in relation to each other and to the broader landscape is key to building a robust body of rigorous, policy-relevant evidence. With the support of Duke University Population Research Institute (DUPRI), I (Lisa) convened a small group of multidisciplinary scholars conducting ongoing randomized evaluations of cash transfers in the United States to share challenges and emerging lessons and findings. Both the cash transfer programs and the evaluations varied widely. Some administered one-time payments while others gave recipients anywhere from $333 to $1000 per month for nine to fifty-two months. 

Learn more about the studies: 

• A Randomized Controlled Trial Varying Unconditional Cash Transfer Amounts in the United States. Studied the impact of one-time cash transfers on a range of outcomes.
• The COVID-19 Cash Transfer Studies. Studied the impact of one-time cash transfers on a range of outcomes. 
•  Baby's First Years Unconditional Cash Transfer Experiment (Ongoing, some published outcomes). Studying the impact of poverty alleviation on child development. 
• Evaluation of The Chelsea Eats Program (Ongoing). Studying the impact of recurring cash transfers on food security in Chelsea, Massachusetts. 
• Evaluation of The Compton Pledge (Ongoing). Studying the impact of a guaranteed income pilot on a range of outcomes in Compton, California.
• The Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers on Consumption (Ongoing). Studying the impact of basic income on a range of outcomes. 

Throughout the one-day workshop, scholars discussed various themes and common challenges from their work and similar studies from both the United States and abroad. 

Selecting and measuring appropriate outcomes

Unconditional cash and its inherent flexibility can theoretically change many aspects of people’s lives. However, researchers cannot feasibly measure every possible outcome and therefore need to make difficult tradeoffs about what to measure and how. The scholars at the convening spoke about the difficulty of deciding what to measure; needing to balance competing priorities between minimizing burdens on participants, scientific rigor and integrity, and the interests of policymakers and practitioners. For example, many lawmakers are interested in whether cash transfers reduce employment or increase purchases of “temptation” goods, such as alcohol and cigarettes. However, other stakeholders have raised concerns about the potential moral implications of monitoring how people spend money and perpetuating stereotypes—especially racial stereotypes—of individuals with low incomes. 

In addition to the challenges of deciding outcomes of interest, researchers discussed limitations of and opportunities for how to measure their chosen outcomes. For example, what are the merits and drawbacks of objective versus subjective measures? One study found that while self-reported (subjective) mental health did not improve, mental health-related emergency room visits as measured through administrative data (objective) decreased for those who received cash. 

Researchers discussed how community members, including participants themselves, can help inform outcomes. For example, qualitative data can be a helpful tool for determining both what to measure and how to measure it. Most of the research teams represented at the convening incorporated focus groups, interviews, or open-response survey questions into their research designs to integrate the voices of recipients as well as community leaders. One asked study participants to rank how they planned to spend their money and then used this information to guide researchers’ decisions about which outcomes to measure. Qualitative data and community input serve as tools for identifying and operationalizing outcomes. They can shed light on the mechanisms behind certain findings and what types of information are most useful for policymakers and practitioners. 

Designing cash transfer programs

The way that these programs are designed may have an impact on the way recipients spend the money. Examples of design choices include lump sums versus small installments; debit cards versus bank account deposits; whether cash is being disbursed by a private or public source; and whether programs suggest the cash be used for a specific purpose, such as food or housing.

While many researchers were interested in testing these various design choices and their impacts, each of the researchers in attendance had various levels of control and involvement in shaping the design of the cash support. Some studied programs designed and administered by a government (e.g. Compton Pledge) and therefore had little input into the program’s mechanics. Others, such as the Basic Income Project or the COVID-19 Cash Transfer Studies, were designed and implemented directly by the researchers. For every evaluation, program designs were determined by balancing competing priorities from communities, partners, and research teams.

Sharing results and the current policy landscape

Finally, researchers shared concerns over how to discuss findings in an evolving political and economic landscape in the United States. Politicians and policymakers have been increasingly invested in cash transfer pilots, as exemplified by organizations such as Mayors for Guaranteed Income . However, there is also skepticism. Because initial evidence from some of the studies suggests null impacts for one-time cash payments , evidence should be situated into the broader policy debate with particular care and attention—especially in preventing the proliferation of reductive narratives. 

Attendees discussed the importance of being clear about what researchers learned from each study—what they know and what they do not know. For example, many of these studies took place during Covid-19, when people were receiving other stimulus support. While the benefit of randomized evaluations is that they ensure similarities across treatment and control groups, the effect of the cash may fluctuate under naturally occurring changes in the economy. Other outcomes, such as formal employment, may also be affected by the pandemic due to school and childcare closures or workplace conditions. Because communicating about these results requires nuance, researchers also discussed and emphasized the importance of building partnerships and trust with implementing partners and government to do this well. While controlling the political narrative may be unrealistic, researchers can play an important role by being clear and precise in contextualizing the evidence. 

The future of research on cash transfers 

Throughout the day, researchers discussed questions for future investigation. For example: 

• What is the impact of providing cash to entire communities (as opposed to only a subset of individuals in a community)?
• What is the impact of cash transfers compared to other interventions of the same cost? (A similar evaluation was conducted in Rwanda ). 
• How can the impact of cash transfers be understood in the context of social safety net programs, like SNAP? 
• How can holistic assessments of impacts from cash transfers be considered given differences in context, populations, and design features? 

The opportunity to learn from each other in a small, informal setting and from both domestic and international scholarship proved to be both productive and cathartic: scholars expressed interest in ongoing conversations to continue in this community of shared learning.

As this body of research continues to grow, we hope researchers in the J-PAL North America community and beyond will continue to work together, discuss challenges, and share best practices in the interest of building collective insights. Many of these research teams expect to have publications in the spring and summer of 2024. To stay up to date on study results and ongoing discussion, make sure to subscribe to the J-PAL North America newsletter. 

In an  accompanying post , Paul Niehaus shares his perspective on studies of cash transfers in low- and middle-income countries and on how the United States can learn from other contexts.

Authored By

Lisa A. Gennetian

Professor of Public Policy, Pritzker Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies

Duke University

Laina Sonterblum

Cordelia Kwon

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Cash Transfer as a Social Protection Intervention: Evidence from UNICEF Evaluations

Cash transfers are one modality among a range of social protection interventions. Predictable direct transfers to individuals or households protect them from shocks and support the accumulation of human, productive and financial assets. UNICEF supports advocacy for national policy development and provides technical assistance to government-led cash transfer programmes in many countries. The evaluation synthesis is the first exercise of this kind in the social protection programme area and the first evaluation synthesis focusing explicitly on programme impacts. It distills lessons from 42 high quality evaluations and assessments completed by UNICEF offices between 2010 and 2014 and entered into the UNICEF Evaluation and Research Database. The report provides a brief overview of social protection and cash transfer work in UNICEF, presents the evidence base for the synthesis and examines programme results by sector, by effects on economic productivity and by effects on social inclusion. Cross-cutting issues of particular concern are also scrutinized. The overarching finding is that cash transfers contribute directly to a wide range of sectoral outcomes around education, early childhood development, health, etc.; and that they help advance progress towards equity goals, including in the poorest countries. Finally, the evaluation synthesis presents conclusions and recommendations to strengthen cash transfer programmes and to improve the quality of the evidence base in social protection

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• DOI: 10.1016/J.FOODPOL.2017.11.002
• Corpus ID: 51933568

Impacts of the Malawi social cash transfer program on household food and nutrition security

• K. Brugh , G. Ángeles , +2 authors S. Handa
• Published 22 November 2017
• Economics, Agricultural and Food Sciences
• Food Policy

43 Citations

Effects of cash transfers on food expenditure patterns in northern kenya, the direct and indirect effects of cash transfer program on the consumption of nutrients: evidence from kenya, the impact of the productive safety net program (psnp) on food security and asset accumulation of rural households’: evidence from gedeo zone, southern ethiopia.

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Cash transfers and nutrition: The role of market isolation after weather shocks

Evaluating the short run and long run impacts of unconditional cash transfers on food-seeking behaviour: new insights from bisp, pakistan, cash transfers and child nutritional outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis, do cash transfers increase nutritional intakes experimental evidence from an unconditional cash transfer in kenya., socio-demographic factors affecting food security for low-income household during the covid-19 pandemic in the special region of yogyakarta, effects of short-term cash and food incentives on food insecurity and nutrition among hiv-infected adults in tanzania, government transfers, covid‐19 shock, and food insecurity: evidence from rural households in india, 24 references, the impact of the social cash transfer scheme on food security in malawi, interrupting the intergenerational cycle of poverty with the malawi social cash transfer, the allocation of household income to food consumption, are cash transfers a silver bullet evidence from the zambian child grant, food price volatility over the last decade in niger and malawi: extent, sources and impact on child malnutrition, subsistence farming as a safety net for food-price shocks, feeding more people on an increasingly fragile planet：china’s food and nutrition security in a national and global context, the impact of droughts and floods on food security and policy options to alleviate negative effects, perspectives on relevant concepts related to food and nutrition security, food and nutrition security indicators: a review.

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