This paper assesses the targeting performance of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP) – a large scale social safety net program that reaches more than one million rural Ethiopian households. Most beneficiary households do public works while a small proportion receive...

We investigate the impact of participation in the Public Works component of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program, the largest social protection program in Sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa, on schooling and child labor. Income from Public Works should reduce demand for child labor...

We assess the impact of a large-scale social protection intervention, Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), over a 15-year period. We find that the PSNP had a positive impact on food security but inconsistent impacts on assets. There were positive impacts on fertilizer use,...

This paper assesses the impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP), the largest social protection program in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. Using Propensity Score Matching techniques, we find that the programme has little impact on participants on average, due in...

Safety nets are controversial. While their proponents see them as a means of ensuring that the benefits of economic growth are shared widely, critics see them as squandering scarce public resources and doing little to promote longer term development while discouraging work and investment. The...