Topic: Just Give Money to the Poor? undefined Cash Transfers have become one of the main tools for improving the lives of the poor

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Topic: Just Give Money to the Poor?

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Cash Transfers have become one of the main tools for improving the lives of the poor. undefined

Step 1: Select a country and a cash transfer program. I suggest looking at this report (link) and searching for your country of interest. Please do not choose Mexico or Kenya as they have too much information. You may choose your country from paper 1 and 2 or a new country

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Step 2: Find at least one study of that program. The report in step 1 should have several

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Step 3:  Select one of five topics: poverty, education, nutrition, employment or empowerment (these are the chapters in the report linked above). Find an additional article from another cash transfer program preferably in a neighboring country. Make sure your first paper also has an evaluation of that topic. 

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Step 4: Download one of the eight papers on cash and asset transfers from this blog post (scroll down (to the end of the instructions) based on the day of the month of your birthday. So if your birthday is the 20th you would use the sixth paper

Birthday (day of month)

Paper #

1-3

1

4-6

2

7-10

3

11-14

4

15-18

5

19-21

6

22-25

7

26-31

8

Your paper should cover the following. I include suggested though not required lengths for each section.

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1. In an introduction describe the program and the country that the cash transfer takes place in. The introduction should include GDP per capita, number of households receiving the transfer, who is the target for the cash transfer, the amount of cash each family receives, and relevant statistics for the area of interest (e.g. education, nutrition) from Step 3. (½ page)
2. A summary of the first study on the specific program. What were the findings? How were things measured. (½ page)
3. A summary of a similar program in another country that examined the same outcome. I would also like stats on that country and compare it to your main country of interest is it richer or poorer. (¾ page)
4. A summary of the article you were assigned based on your birthday. Relate it to the other studies you have found (½ page)
5. Give Directly is a charity that provides Cash Transfer in Kenya and Uganda. Go to the Giver Directly blog (link). Find a recipient of the Give Directly transfer from X days ago, where X also corresponds to the paper number you had. Summarize what one person spent their transfers on and how it relates to the goals of the program. (½ page). In your references provide a link to the page.  
6. Write a short conclusion (¼ page) 

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Cash transfers and asset transfers

• Cash transfers actually increased child labor in Zambia and Malawi, despite improving child welfare on a host of other measures. (de Hoop, Groppo, and Handa) #RCT
• What do cash transfers conditional on school enrollment do for 18-year-olds? Little to nothing in Brazil. (Machado, Pinho Neto, and Szerman)
• Nationwide, unconditional cash transfers in Iran led to no apparent reduction impact on labor supply, with increases for service sector workers (Salehi-Isfahani and Mostafavi-Dehzooei) #FixedEffects
• A large, one-time cash transfer in Kenya didn’t increase informal taxation (by local leaders) but did slightly increase formal taxation (Walker)
• “An unexpected [adverse health or job] shock [among cash transfer beneficiaries in Mexico] reduces labor supply, food security, mental health, and healthful behavior, but it does not affect parenting, cognition, risk and time preferences, and expectations and aspirations about children’s educational attainment.” (Angelucci et al.)
• An asset transfer program in Zambia “significantly increased resilience among participant households, with beneficiaries 44% less likely than control households to fall into poverty. The program both increased the mean and decreased the variance in household assets (Phadera et al.)
• We’ve seen that a program targeting the ultra-poor in Bangladesh increased consumption after four years. (Goldstein blogged on it.) New measures suggest that “program participants are made better off not only through higher average household welfare, but through a fall in period-to-period variation, suggestive of a greater ability to smooth welfare over time.” 
• Livestock transfers and training to households in Zambia had the result that “decisions made jointly by men and women increased by 17% across all household activities, with statistically significant declines in independent decision making by men.” (Kafle, Michelson, & Winter-Nelson)