Social assistance for education is one of several instruments in Indonesia to support poor and vulnerable people. There are two main programs which is Family Hope Program (PKH) and Smart Indonesia Program (PIP). Analyzing the distributional impact to both programs is very important to improve...

This paper aims to assess the extent to which cash transfers, direct taxes, and social contributions help to reduce gender income inequalities in seven Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. We apply microsimulation techniques to household...

This study aims to quantify the extent to which poor households receiving cash support from the Vision Umurenge Programme (VUP) allocate their income across major spending categories, mainly consumption, savings, household-level investment, and cash transfers for community participation. The...

Purpose - Health shocks are among the factors that have impeded households from experiencing better welfare. To mitigate the consequences of these shocks, individuals have sought to enrol in a formal insurance scheme or borrow from banks. This study estimates the effects of health shocks on...

Reducing poverty and improving the living standards of the poor and vulnerable populations in Sri Lanka have been one of the country's key goals. The government has designed poverty-targeting programs with relevant government agencies working to support low-income families. The programs include...

One challenge presented by population aging is how to adjust public support for social care in a way that achieves desired quality of life outcomes without compromising budget sustainability. This study uses best-practice methods of economic analysis to explore projections for care and related...

The motherhood penalty is well-documented, but what happens at the other end of the reproductive spectrum? Menopause - a transition often marked by debilitating physical and psychological symptoms - also entails substantial costs. Using population-wide Norwegian and Swedish data and...

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in the number of people getting health-related benefits. In England and Wales, 4 million 16- to 64-year-olds (1 in 10) now claim either disability or incapacity benefits, up from 2.8 million in 2019 (1 in 13). One potential...

Background The use of health care services by the most vulnerable households in low-and middle-income countries is a major challenge. This includes ensuring access to health services and protecting households from the financial risks of unaffordable medical care. In 2008, Togo put in place a...

Universal Credit (UC) was a large-scale reform of the UK welfare system reform, replacing six existing benefits. UC aimed to simplify claims and encourage more claimants into work. We identify its effect on mental well-being, treating the phased rollout from 2013-2018 as a natural experiment. We...

Prosocial behavior—actions aimed to benefit other individuals, groups, or communities—are important for promoting and maintaining a healthy society. Extant research on the factors driving prosocial behavior has mainly addressed short-term effects, overlooking the factors that motivate...

Whether gender-targeted cash transfers effectively redistribute resources to women and children in poor households remains an open question. We examine Uruguay’s largest social assistance program, Asignaciones Familiares (AFAM), which is directed at poor families with children and paid to...

This study assesses the effectiveness of Mozambique's flagship social pension programme, the elderly component of the Programa de Subsídio Social Básico (PSSB). Focusing on three key criteria- programme targeting, reliability, and materiality-we combine administrative data on the universe of...

Joint programming, also referred to as convergence, in social protection and economic inclusion interventions has emerged as a critical strategy for addressing persistent poverty in the Philippines. Despite the government's ambitious target to reduce poverty from 18.1% in 2021 to 9% by 2028,...

This paper examines the role of social protection in mitigating the adverse effects of conflict on household welfare. We assess the impact of a graduation intervention linked to Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme, focusing on Amhara, a region severely affected by the Tigray conflict....

This paper tests whether partially unemployed workers value future preserved benefits when they bunch at the kink of the unemployment insurance benefit-withdrawal schedule. I extend the bunching formula of Saez (2010) to a dynamic setting that accounts for the value of future benefits tied to...

This paper examines the current state of play and trends in social assistance in terms of spending, coverage, incidence, benefit size, and poverty reduction impacts using administrative data and household survey data from about 70 countries worldwide. This paper is the fourth edition of the...

The paper examines the social protection response to the COVID-19 pandemic across 76 emerging and developing economies (EDEs) to identify lessons on how to make these systems more resilient against risks, shocks, and crises at the individual, household, or national level. The COVID-19 pandemic...

This study assesses the impact of fiscal policy in Pakistan - taxes, social expenditures, and subsidy expenditures - on poverty and inequality using the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Methodology. Results show that fiscal policy increased the national poverty headcount and left inequality largely...

We investigate how length of time on welfare during childhood affects economic outcomes in early adulthood. Using intergenerationally linked mother-child pairs from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we adopt a nonlinear difference-in-differences framework using the 1990s welfare reform to...

When economic crises destabilize labor markets, they offer unique opportunities to explore welfare dynamics and the interplay between partnership formation and social assistance. Using data from Sweden's 1990s economic crisis, characterized by high unemployment, expanding budget deficit, and a...

Why is in-kind aid a prominent feature of welfare systems? We present a lab-in-the-field experiment involving members of the general U.S. population and SNAP recipients. After documenting a widespread desire to limit recipients’ choices, we quantify the relative importance of (i) welfarist...