Ugo Gentilini

Great #TimelyCash events last week: beyond grateful to @politicaleconhub.bsky.social ‬@stcatharines.bsky.social @blavatnikschool.bsky.social @gamblingondev.bsky.social & @odi.global for the extraordinary hospitality & opportunity to discuss 2500 years of #cashtransfers!

academic.oup.com/book/58850

A #basicincome pilot in #Germany provided 100+ young people (21-40 yrs), and already earning €1100-2600, with an extra €1200/month for 3 years (2021-24).

Results: people keep working and study even more (plus higher wellbeing in various dimensions).

www.pilotprojekt-grundeinkommen.de/en/labour

Cash saves lives:

Alaskan universal #cashtransfers (mildly) increase the odds that male twins survive gestation due to reduced mothers' economic insecurity.

Singh et al
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

12 years on, the effects of a cash grant ($380/person) in #Uganda are alive and kicking... earnings among beneficiaries are 22% higher, but only among men.

Fiala et al
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In #NewZealand, #cashtransfers of $37/week to mothers with children aged 0-1 reduced the odds of child abuse/neglect by 19% (and 26% among those with past child protective service records).

Moullin and Milne
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

- Tuesday Feb 4 @16:15-17:15 hosted by Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford: www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/events/blava...

- Wednesday Feb 5 @16:30-18:00 hosted by Global Development Institute, University of Manchester: events.manchester.ac.uk/event/event:...

Book info: lnkd.in/eHttxJKR

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-Monday Feb 3 @18:00-19:30 hosted by University of Cambridge, St Catharine's Political Economy Seminar Series:
www.politicaleconomy.group.cam.ac.uk/events/what-...

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Exciting #TimelyCash book tour coming up!

What are we learning from 2500 years of #cashtransfers history? If you are in the UK, join the conversation and meet me at one of these upcoming events:

- Monday Feb 3 at 12:00-13:00 hosted by ODI in London: odi.org/en/events/in...

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Check out what happened this week on #socialprotection around the world, all in a handy blog:

www.ugogentilini.net/links-jan-17...

2 papers on #cashtransfers (TKP) in #Egypt!

- TKP didn’t bolster consumption, but increased assets + reduced debt (Karachiwalla et al
cgspace.cgiar.org/server/api/c...)

- only 32% would opt to leave TKP to join the Forsa economic inclusion program (Allen et al
cgspace.cgiar.org/server/api/c...)

Another big study on life-saving effects of #cashtransfers.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How research is designed matters — it’s the door through which results head out, but potentially also the window for ideology to sneak in.

www.nber.org/papers/w33274

Which country has the longest tradition of *experimental* #cashtransfers evidence?

Hint: it’s not a low/middle income country.

Like in the 1960-70s, the US is a powerhouse of pilots.

(Past: eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/course...

Present:
jainfamilyinstitute.org/wp-content/u...)

New article from #Nigeria suggests that #cashtransfers to women increase their demand for agency “secretly” — that is, they do not “change the intra-household balance of power enough to allow them to express it publicly”.

Bakhtiar et al
academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a...

Takeaways on #cashtransfers and fertility in high-income countries:

1. Child benefits (on # children) ≠ baby bonus (on birth)
2. Mixed effects
3. Impact magnitude "tends to be small (if any)".

Gauthier and Gietel-Basten
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

#humanitarian "value for money"?

“That greater cost efficiency is likely to be correlated with greater program scale... runs contrary to practice... where lower budgets are seen as an impetus for cost squeezing [and] higher value for money.”

Tulloch et al
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

“In nearly half of the 7,821 assessments analysed, [social workers] indicated that both an approval and a denial decision were possible.”

Insightful analysis from #Sweden illuminates the relationship between human judgment and means testing.

Hussenius et al
doi.org/10.1332/2755...

Can a "big push" program help conflict-affected households in Somalia? Yup...

(p.s. big push = cash (9 months) + asset or TVET training + coaching + financial literacy + business facilitation + savings groups + disaster risk training)

@kallehi.bsky.social et al
www.ifpri.org/blog/graduat...

The weekly links are wrapping up the year by featuring the top 100 #socialprotection papers of 2024, enjoy!

www.ugogentilini.net/links-dec-20...

Insightful paper comparing the politics of #socialprotection in China, India and Turkey.

Roy et al:
www.ippjournal.org/uploads/1/3/...

Thanks for the kind words Gawain, hope you’ll enjoy the book too.

Warning from #Sweden: automation of select administrative functions of #cashtransfers “… does not inherently lead to… faster and fairer eligibility [nor] a more client-centered approach in social assistance casework”.

Germundsson et al
www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

How do women feel about #socialprotection in the OECD?

New study finds that “… women are far less confident than men in their ability to access adequate benefits and services when they need them, both in working age and old age”.

Frey et al
www.oecd.org/content/dam/...

15 years of lessons from #Ethiopia’s PSNP, all in one great paper!

Hoddinott et al
www.wider.unu.edu/sites/defaul...

New systematic lit review looks at #cashtransfers and other social assistance programs through a crisis lens in #Africa.

Hirvonen et al
www.wider.unu.edu/sites/defaul...

Check out Part-I of a special edition of the weekly #socialprotection links, where 23 great minds share their suggested readings of 2024!

www.ugogentilini.net/links-dec-13...

New Lancet article on universal #cashtransfers for children:

"universal child cash benefits should be at the forefront of the broader economic policy portfolio as an investment in a nation's health, sustainability, and global competitiveness".

Shaefer et al
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Boom!

#socialprotection helps but it is *not* enough.

"... in most countries in Africa, poverty rates increase after fiscal interventions, even in high- and middle-income countries, more so than [in contexts] with similar levels of development".

Sinha et al (eds)
www.worldbank.org/en/region/af...

Hope the author will visit Norway soon!

After various working paper versions, the big review on #socialprotection in low and middle income countries by Banerjee et al is now available in journal (JEP) form. Super neat!

pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...