Publication: Cash Transfer Timing: How Transfer Duration and Frequency Contribute to Outcomes
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2024-06-14
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2024-06-14
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As a part of “Evidence at Your Fingertips Series”, this note summarizes the impacts of cash transfers based on the duration and frequency of transfers. The review is largely based on the impact evaluations published in the past decade, finding that the impact of cash transfers varies based on duration, depending on whether they are distributed over a short (24 months or less) or long (more than 24 months) period. Cash transfers distributed over a long period provide predictability that is associated with greater impact, particularly with transfers distributed to improve children’s health, nutrition and education, and employment and labor. A longer duration of transfers allows for households to plan, which in turn allows households to engage in riskier yet more-profitable income-generating activities, when available. While the evidence suggests that frequency of cash disbursements alone does not significantly affect outcomes, it is important to remember that the confluence of size, frequency, and duration of cash transfers may produce different results than any single factor in isolation.
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“World Bank; Innovations for Poverty Action. 2024. Cash Transfer Timing: How Transfer Duration and Frequency Contribute to Outcomes. Social Protection and Jobs Policy and Technical Note; No.35; Evidence at Your Fingertips Series. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41717 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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