Publication: The Earlier the Better? Impact of Shock-responsive Monetary Transfers for Drought in Niger
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2025-07-10
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2025-07-10
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This brief highlights the impact of providing early transfers to respond to droughts shocks faster than the traditional response.
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“Mariana, Garcia Martinez; Lung, Felix; Pople, Ashley; Premand, Patrick; Vinez, Margaux. 2025. The Earlier the Better? Impact of Shock-responsive Monetary Transfers for Drought in Niger. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43444 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication The Earlier the Better? Cash Transfers for Drought Response in Niger(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-06)Climatic shocks exacerbate consumption volatility and seasonality. When facing fluctuations in labor needs and prices, low-income rural households may rationally increase their consumption during specific seasons rather than maintaining it constant throughout the year. This makes the optimal timing of policy responses to shocks ambiguous. This paper examines the impact of varying the timing of cash transfers in response to drought in Niger, leveraging satellite-based triggers for a faster response before the lean season. A randomized controlled trial compares large early transfers delivered before the lean season, a traditional humanitarian response during the lean season, and smaller regular transfers throughout the year. The results show that large early transfers yield greater net benefits on economic welfare and psychological well-being before and during the lean season compared to a traditional humanitarian lean season response. The large early transfers also tend to have larger effects than the year-long transfers. These welfare differences do not persist after the lean season and nine months later. The early timing of transfers shifts borrowing behavior but has no discernible impact on livelihoods. The findings demonstrate the value of sufficiently large early transfers in mitigating the effects of a severe drought in presence of seasonal fluctuations in labor needs and prices.Publication Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Experimental Evidence with Lessons for Climate Change Adaptation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04)While climate change is likely to increase weather risks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies to facilitate adaptation. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households' risk-management through income diversification. The intervention targeted agricultural households exposed to weather shocks related to changes in rainfall and temperature patterns. It combined a conditional cash transfer with vocational training or a productive investment grant. The authors identify the relative impact of each complementary package based on randomized assignment, and analyze how impacts vary by exposure to exogenous drought shocks. The results show that both complementary interventions provide full protection against drought shocks two years after the end of the intervention. Households that received the productive investment grant also had higher average consumption levels. The complementary interventions led to diversification of economic activities and better protection from shocks compared to beneficiaries of the basic conditional cash transfer and control households. These results show that combining safety nets with productive interventions can help households manage future weather risks and promote longer-term program impacts.Publication Do Cash Transfers Foster Resilience? Evidence from Rural Niger(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-11)Policy makers are increasingly interested in strategies to promote resilience and mitigate the effects of future climatic shocks. Cash transfer programs have had widely documented positive welfare impacts. They often also aim to offer protection against shocks, but their role in fostering resilience has been less studied. This paper assesses whether the beneficiaries of a multiyear government cash transfer program in rural Niger are better able to mitigate the welfare effects of drought shocks. It analyzes mechanisms through which cash transfers contribute to resilience, such as savings facilitation, asset accumulation, or income smoothing in agriculture and off-farm activities. It combines household survey data collected as part of a randomized control trial with satellite data used to identify exogenous rainfall shocks. The results show that cash transfers increase household consumption by about 10 percent on average. Importantly, this increase is mostly concentrated among households affected by drought shocks, for whom welfare impacts are larger than transfer amounts. Cash transfers increase savings. They also help households protect earnings in agriculture and off-farm businesses when shocks occur. Few differences in household durables or livestock are observed. Overall, these findings suggest that cash transfer programs targeting poor households can foster resilience by facilitating savings and income smoothing.Publication Voter Response to Natural Disaster Aid : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Drought Relief Payments in Mexico(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-04)The paper estimates the effects on presidential election returns in Mexico of a government climatic contingency transfer that is allocated through rainfall-indexed insurance. 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