Low- and middle-income countries offer a wide variety of social protection programs meant to target vulnerable populations, and vulnerable individuals may be eligible for multiple welfare benefits. Despite the high volume of social protection policies, take-up...

This research project intends to study the effect of community-driven development compared to a program that provides cash directly to households. It will also explore if community facilitation and training improve the effectiveness of cash transfers...

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are a widely-used anti-poverty policy that provides a regular stream of liquidity to low-income households. But if beneficiaries don't smooth consumption, they may face “consumption crunches” as their funds deplete each month...

Public works programs are popular worldwide as a strategy for reducing poverty and creating growth-enhancing infrastructure. There is growing evidence supporting their short-run benefits, but still scarce or mixed empirical evidence on urban programs, on...

The multifaceted livelihood program designed by BRAC—known as the “Graduation approach”—which provides ultra-poor households with a productive asset, training, coaching, access to savings, and consumption support has been shown to be effective in Bangladesh...

The ability of consumers to smooth income or transfers is integral to these effectively contributing toward social protection. Smoothing at scale—particularly smoothing of aggregate shocks—might also lead to important general equilibrium price effects...

Climate change will intensify extreme weather events. In addition to tragic direct consequences that include deaths and physical damage to homes and businesses, these storms pose enormous financial risk to small and geographically concentrated financial...

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has one of the highest poverty rates in the world. Youth unemployment has been a chronic issue, with the vast majority of Papua New Guineans engaged in informal sector activities such as subsistence agriculture. In the absence of a...

As of March 2021, an estimated 1.7 million people from Venezuela were based in Colombia—approximately 32 percent of all Venezuelan migrants in Latin America. Colombia has committed to a series of policies for the social and economic integration of Venezuelan...

How do social protection programs, specifically “cash plus” interventions that combine unconditional cash transfers with nutritional training, impact market formation, prices, and product availability in general equilibrium? This research project intends to...

Maternal and infant mortality are a leading public health concern across sub-Saharan Africa, and especially Tanzania, where mortality rates for infants and mothers are 6 and 20 times larger than the United States. Qualitative studies suggest that reducing...

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) government aims to increase workers placed in labor mobility schemes from the current 1,000 to 8,000 in the coming years, creating great potential for development impacts in PNG where poverty and unemployment remain high. This is a...

This project tests the effectiveness of a low-cost version of the classic graduation program for very low-income households. One treatment group gets the standard program, while a second treatment group gets a similarly structured program but at half cost. The...

To exit poverty, income streams of low-income individuals must align with their liquidity needs (e.g., large investments, consumption-smoothing, saving for shocks and smaller expenses). Traditional cash transfer programs lack flexibility, offering fixed...

Disaster relief often faces delays due to administrative bottlenecks and approval processes. These delays can last for weeks or even months, exacerbating the challenges faced by vulnerable populations. The researchers study a cutting-edge program in Fiji...

The researchers will study the impact of a village-wide graduation program on small enterprises. In this innovative program, every household in an eligible (highly impoverished) village receives a package of agricultural and livestock inputs and small...

This study examines the impacts of integrating refugees into a national public works and livelihoods program, leveraging a nationwide large-scale randomized controlled trial conducted among 22,500 households across six refugee camps and neighboring areas in...

This project will compare the efficacy of alternative modalities for delivering government wage subsidies to small firms to encourage them to hire young first-time workers in South Africa. The South African government already offers an Employment Tax Incentive...

With this grant, researchers will evaluate the feasibility of a randomized evaluation of Fiji’s parametric cyclone insurance program. The program was first piloted in 2021, through a partnership between the Pacific Insurance and Climate Adaptation Programme...

The researchers propose an experiment to study the impacts of expanding job-displacement insurance in a low-income country. A large garment factory in the Hawassa Industrial Park (Ethiopia) laid off 2,000 female workers in August 2022. As is common in low- and...

What is the relationship between employment and gender identity? This study seeks to generate evidence on the relationship between the experience of employment – as distinct from cash transfers alone – and intimate partner violence, intra-household bargaining...

As technological innovation has lowered the cost of transferring money, many policymakers have begun to discuss replacing in-kind social protection systems with cash transfers. The debate has been particularly intense in the case of India's Public Distribution...

Researchers will study the long-term effects of a micro-entrepreneurship program implemented by the Chilean government. The program delivered start-up capital and training. The mid-term evaluation showed a positive effect on micro-entrepreneurship and wage...

Using a novel locally grown health service delivery model in Bangladesh that tracks the universe of newly married couples and connects them to local health services, researchers aim to study whether targeting mothers early in pregnancy with three complementary...