This paper presents an in-depth analysis of who benefits and who misses out on social assistance (SA) transfers in Malaysia. As the first in a two-part series on SA, the paper uses data from the Household Income Survey (HIS) of 2019 and 2022 to assess targeting outcomes and the adequacy of...

The tax and transfer system partially insures households against individual income risk. We build a framework to assess the size and (welfare) value of this partial insurance, which is based on exploiting distributional differences between household gross income and disposable income. Our...

This study examines the career aspirations of economically disadvantaged Filipino children participating in the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), the Philippines' flagship conditional cash transfer program. Using data from 9,958 children aged 10 to 25 collected through the Fourth Wave...

Colombia has a complex legal framework meant to protect the population against basic risks through a combination of contributory and non-contributory social insurance. The population is almost perfectly split between them, with eligibility to participate in the latter determined by poverty....

The current report presents findings of a research project that explored attitudes towards welfare and redistributive policies among Irish residents. Public support for the welfare state is an important foundation for democratic governments to pursue the policies needed to alleviate poverty in...

The risk of a worker falling into unemployment represents one of the most important threats to the stability of households' finances - both in terms of lower spending (and hence living standards) and in terms of a greater degree of financial distress (such as the accumulation of unmanageable...

When structural labor supply models are unavailable or impractical, the paper proposes a practical method for incorporating behavioral responses into static taxbenefit microsimulation models. Using elasticity estimates from the literature, the proposed external evidence procedure offers a...

Integration agreements (IA) outline the efforts the jobseeker should undertake to find employment and specify the services that the caseworker would provide to assist them in their job search. The agreements include a declaration of legal consequences, and punitive benefit sanctions could be...

Die vorliegende Studie fragt nach Herkunft, Bedeutung und Auswirkung der Bezeichnung "Totalverweigerer", die ursprünglich von Bundesarbeitsminister Hubertus Heil für Grundsicherungsbeziehende, die mehrfach die Aufnahme einer Erwerbsarbeit verweigern, verwendet wurde. Ende März 2024 wurde dann...

This policy note examines the role of social safety nets in addressing persistent poverty and inequality in Cameroon. Building on over a decade of implementation, Cameroon's main safety nets initiative-the Projet Filets Sociaux (PFS)-has laid important foundations but remains limited in scale...

We study how public school teachers use paid sick leave. Most US sick leave schemes operate as individualized credit accounts: Paid leave is earned, and unused leave accumulates. We construct a unique dataset of daily leave balances and behavior among 982 teachers for 2010–2018. Sick leave use...

This paper assesses the impact of the Agrarian Unemployment Benefit (AUB), a regionally targeted income support scheme introduced in Andalucía, Spain, in 1984. At its peak, the program covered more than 10% of the regional labour force, making it one of the most extensive welfare measures of...

We develop a framework to assess when social programmes should prioritize expanding coverage versus improving targeting accuracy. Rather than treating universalism and targeting as a binary choice, we derive a practical rule-of-thumb based on observed eligibility rates and programme quotas to...

Innovations in big data and algorithms are enabling new approaches to target interventions at scale. We compare the accuracy of three different systems for identifying the poor to receive benefit transfers - proxy means-testing, nominations from community members, and an algorithmic approach...

We evaluate the short- and long-run effects of a large conditional cash transfer program that paid students to remain in full-time education beyond the compulsory school-leaving age. The Education Maintenance Allowance paid teenagers from low-income families in the United Kingdom up to £30 per...

As increasingly frequent extreme weather events disrupt lives, institutions are turning to early-warning systems and advance preparation to accelerate aid delivery. A randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh and Nepal tested whether providing cash within days of a flood leads to greater...

The government-implemented Supporting Women’s Livelihoods (SWL) intervention yielded large and lasting improvements in welfare outcomes for extremely poor women in Zambia. The SWL intervention aims to enhance women’s livelihoods and economic resilience by providing poor rural women with a...

Cash transfers are a cornerstone of social protection. This paper evaluates an integrated program in Burkina Faso that combines cash transfers with parenting interventions delivered through group meetings or home visits. In a randomized experiment across 225 villages, households received cash...

The 1996 U.S. welfare reform introduced time limits on welfare receipt. We use quasiexperimental evidence and a rich life cycle model to understand the impact of time limits on different margins of behavior and well-being. We stress the impact of marital status and marital transitions on...

The Spanish Minimum Income scheme, introduced in 2020, offers beneficiaries a unique national guaranteed income as a last-resort benefit. However, the scheme's design featured a lack of work incentives for low earners, potentially leading to inactivity traps. To address this flaw the Spanish...

This study aims to explore whether there is evidence supporting that the State Welfare Card causes the reduction of the poverty rate in Thailand. With data limitations, we rely on the 2019 household socio-economic survey to compare the consumption expenditure of those who received the card...

Vor dem Hintergrund aktueller Reformüberlegungen zur Zumutbarkeit von Arbeit nach § 10 SGB II untersucht dieser Forschungsbericht, welche Entfernungen zwischen Wohnort und Arbeitsort bei Beschäftigungsaufnahmen von Personen im Grundsicherungsbezug typischerweise auftreten. Im Fokus stehen...

We evaluate the effects of a randomized activation program targeting recipients of the Spain's national Minimum Income Scheme. The intervention combined personalized coaching, job-search assistance, soft-skills training, and, in one treatment arm, also digital-skills workshops. While short-run...

We re-assess the consequences of a NIT for two-parent families, utilizing hitherto untapped data. The Gary and Seattle experiments fail balancing tests. In New Jersey, Denver and Manitoba we estimate far greater labor supply responses than the current consensus, with remarkable consistency in...