Unconditional cash transfers

What the evidence says

Cash is one of the most studied antipoverty tools. A 2024 meta-analysis, still a working paper, pooled 115 studies of 72 programs in low- and middle-income countries. It found clear positive average effects on 10 of 13 outcomes, including consumption, income, food security, psychological well-being, assets, school enrollment and labor supply.

The best-known trials are in Kenya. In an early randomized evaluation of GiveDirectly’s transfers, recipients’ monthly consumption rose 23 percent, their assets rose 61 percent, and their psychological well-being improved. Spending on alcohol and tobacco did not rise, and the study found no effects on health or education measures. Three years later, recipients still held about 43 percent more assets than the comparison group, but the gains in consumption and well-being were no longer evident.

A larger study tested what cash does to a local economy. Egger and colleagues (2022) gave about $1,000 each to more than 10,500 poor households across 653 villages, an injection worth more than 15 percent of local GDP. Recipients gained, and so did neighbors who received nothing and local firms, with minimal price inflation. The authors estimate a local multiplier of 2.5: total local economic activity rose by about two and a half times the amount transferred.

The grade here is for short-run gains in consumption, assets and well-being, where many rigorous studies agree. Evidence on gains lasting many years is thinner.

Where it sits on the depth scale

Charitology places cash at repair (depth 1), with part of it at relief. Some of each transfer meets needs today. Some rebuilds a household’s base, such as a roof or livestock, which in Kenya was still there three years later. Cash moves money through an economy, but on its own it doesn’t change the laws, markets or institutions that produce poverty, which is where depth 3 work acts. A government cash program built permanently into social protection would sit closer to structure.

Cash is also unusual in who steers it. The program decides who is eligible, but recipients decide how the money is used, which speaks directly to the Missing Voice.

Open questions

• Which gains last, and for how long? In Kenya, assets persisted while consumption gaps faded. In the three-year follow-up, researchers could not tell whether remaining differences between recipients and their neighbors reflected recipients’ gains or neighbors’ losses.
• What is the choice itself worth to the people who receive it? That is the agency premium.
• No reliable per-dollar estimate of the kind the Impact Calculator uses is published for cash. Its benefits are usually measured as consumption gained, and GiveWell uses cash as the benchmark it compares other programs against.