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...

Social protection programs are primarily focused on influencing household behavior in the short term, increasing consumption to reduce poverty and food insecurity, and promoting investments in human capital. A large body of evidence across numerous settings shows that cash and food transfer...

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 Ethiopia’s flagship social protection program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and nutrition security of households, mothers, and children. We use both pre-pandemic in-person household survey data and a...