Publication: Cash Transfers in Pandemic Times: Evidence, Practices, and Implications from the Largest Scale Up in History
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2022-07
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2022-07-13
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Is Coronavirus (Covid-19) a “game changer” for cash transfers? This tantalizing question has animated a large body of recent literature and over 60 virtual panels. This paper offers some clues to address the question by bringing together data, evaluations and practical experiences generated over the course of the pandemic. In particular, the paper flashes out differences between Covid-19 and other crises; it lays out an anatomy of global responses and offers novel data analysis around stylized international trends; synthesizes fresh empirical evidence on response effectiveness based on over 40 evaluations; discusses country-level operational practices as emerging from an array of high and lower-income contexts; and distills key insights with possible future implications.
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“Gentilini, Ugo. 2022. Cash Transfers in Pandemic Times: Evidence, Practices, and Implications from the Largest Scale Up in History. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37700 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Yet the consistency and robustness of methods for efficiency analyses varies greatly.Publication Cash Transfers, Children and the Crisis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06)Developing countries have responded to the multiple shocks from the food, fuel and finance crises of 2008-2009 with a mix of responses aimed at both mitigating the immediate impacts of the crises on households (and particularly children), and protecting future investments in human capital. While some countries have introduced new safety net programs, others have modified and/or expanded existing ones. Since many countries have introduced conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in recent years, these programs have been used as an important starting point for a response. This paper aims to describe how conditional cash transfers have been used by different countries to respond to the crises (e.g. by expanding coverage and/or increasing benefit amounts), distill lessons about their effectiveness as crisis-response programs, identify design features that can facilitate their ability to respond to transient poverty shocks, and assess how they can complement other safety net programs.Publication North-South Knowledge Sharing on Incentive-based Conditional Cash Transfer Programs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-01)Over the last decade, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have become one of the most widely adopted anti-poverty initiatives in the developing world. Inspired particularly by Mexico's successful program, CCTs are viewed as an effective way to provide basic income support while building children's human capital. These programs have had a remarkable global expansion, from a handful programs in the late 1990s to programs in close to 30 countries today, including a demonstration program in the United States. In contrast to many other safety net programs in developing countries, CCTs have been closely studied and well evaluated, creating both a strong evidence base from which to inform policy decisions and an active global community of practice. This paper first reviews the emergence of CCTs in the context of a key theme in welfare reform, notably using incentives to promote human capital development, going beyond the traditional focus on income support. The paper then examines what has been learned to date from the experience with CCTs in the South and raises a series of questions concerning the relevance and replicability of these lessons in other contexts. The paper concludes with a call for further knowledge sharing in two areas: between the North and South as the experience with welfare reform and CCTs in particular expands, and between behavioral science and welfare policy.
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