Brookings Institution estimated that cash programmes spend only US$0.10 for every US$1 of benefits delivered, while in-kind benefit programmes spend US$2.13 per US$1 of delivered goods. It was a success — and soon, other cash transfer programmes started popping up all over the world, from Latin America to Sub-Saharan Africa. Two decades and countless randomised evaluations of hundreds of cash transfer programmes later — the verdict is in. Conditional cash transfer programmes overwhelmingly led to a reduction in various measures of poverty, in addition to improving the health, nutrition, and education of recipient families. Evidence also suggests using cash programmes in tandem with other tools such as microcredit and capacity-building initiatives can help tackle the issue of poverty more holistically.

Source: New Strait Times December 19, 2017 02:03 UTC