End poverty by giving the poor cash?

If you’ve been following my recent posts and papers on giving cash to the poor, three things that may interest you:

First, we’ve put out a 3-page policy note with the World Bank on one Uganda cash transfer program. Here is an IPA policy note on a second study, of cash transfers to poor women in Uganda.

Second, today the New York Times Economix blog posted excerpts of an interview with me about both experiments on giving cash to the poor.

Last, in a strange coincidence of timing, yesterday the FAI blog posted excepts of a similar interview from last year.

57 Responses

  1. Hey Chris. Congratulations on the successful study and all the coverage!

    Again, though, I’d just like to highlight that cash to the poor is no panacea. I’m not arguing with your results: it sounds like straight transfers are very successful in improving earnings and giving some people a leg up out of poverty. However, we find that the many cash transfer programs we examined had, on average, essentially no effect on child nutritional status. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X13000934) We hypothesize that while healthy children certainly need food, cleanliness, sanitation, and good feeding practices are as important as having more food around. So should we “just give money”? Depends on the context!