The literature has shown that, in developing countries, large cash transfers to older people improve the wellbeing of the recipients and their families. While social pensions have recently emerged in East Asia to deliver small cash benefits to older people, there is little consistent evidence of their effects. We examine the effects of the Basic Pension Scheme, a social pension in South Korea, on income and consumption poverty among older adults. We apply a difference-in-differences event study design and other complementary approaches to data covering the full period of program development from 2006 to 2021. The results show that the social pension decreases income poverty but not consumption poverty. While this study analysed the best data currently available, using better-quality data in future research would enable more robust analysis. Further research is also warranted to find how to improve the effectiveness of a non-contributory pension programme as a tool for reducing income and consumption poverty among older adults.

In 2018, Nigeria began the implementation of a cash transfer programme (CCT) for poor and vulnerable people. We evaluated the impact of cash transfer on household livelihood outcomes in Nigeria. Using multistage cluster sampling methodology, beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries within the same locality were randomly selected to participate in a survey to assess the impact of cash transfer on food security and food diversity.

When gender, marital status, educational status, and age were controlled, beneficiaries were about three times more likely than non-beneficiaries to report experiencing little or no hunger. Children 0–59 months of beneficiaries were twice likely to have at least three meals a day compared to children of non-beneficiaries. Difference in differences regression analysis showed that on the average, beneficiaries of the cash transfer significantly consumed more diverse food than non-beneficiaries. Beneficiaries of the CCT experienced fewer episodes of severe hunger, have more meal frequency, and higher household dietary diversity than non-beneficiaries. This shows that the CCT programme is effective and can directly mitigate adverse effects of malnutrition with its long-term negative impact on children and thus must be expanded to more vulnerable people across all states in Nigeria.

In 2017 the Scottish Government passed the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act with the commitment to significantly reduce the relative child poverty rate from the current prevailing level of around 25% to 10% by 2030/31. In response, the government introduced the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) that provides a direct transfer to households at a fixed rate per eligible child – currently £25 per week. In this paper we explore, using a micro to macro modelling approach, the effectiveness of using the SCP to achieve the Scottish child poverty targets. While we find that the ambitious child poverty targets can technically be met solely using the SCP, the necessary payment of £165 per week amounting to a total government cost of £3 billion per year, makes the political and economy-wide barriers significant. A key issue with only using the SCP is the non-linearity in the response to the payment; as the payment increases, the marginal gain in the reduction of child poverty decreases – this is particularly evident after payments of £80 per week. A ‘policy-mix’ option combining the SCP, targeted cash transfers and other policy levels (such as childcare provision) seems the most promising approach to reaching the child poverty targets.

This article conducts a benefit-cost analysis of a child allowance. Through a systematic literature review of the highest quality evidence on the causal effects of cash and near-cash transfers, this article produces core estimates on the benefits and costs per child and per adult of increasing household income by $1000, which can be used for any cash or near-cash program that increases household income. We then apply these estimates to three child allowance proposals, with the main proposal converting the $2000 Child Tax Credit in the federal income tax code into a fully refundable and more generous child allowance of $3600 per child ages 0–5 and $3000 per child ages 6–17, as enacted for 1 year in the American Rescue Plan. Aggregate costs and benefits are estimated via micro-simulation. Our estimates indicate that making the $2000 Child Tax Credit fully refundable and increasing benefits to $3000/$3600 would cost $97 billion per year and generate social benefits of $929 billion per year. Sensitivity analyses indicate that the results are robust to alternative assumptions and that each of the three child allowance proposals produces a very strong to an extraordinarily strong return for the U.S. population.

Social protection (SP) has been demonstrated as an effective tool against poverty and severe hunger. In Ghana, SP interventions have been employed to address vulnerability to poverty since 1965. Nevertheless, its potential for enhancing nutrition has hardly been explored. To harness the cross-sectoral benefits of scaling up nutrition-sensitive actions in Ghana, the national development planning commission requested an assessment of nutrition linkages across existing SP policies and programmes. The present paper presents gaps and opportunities for improving nutrition-sensitivity of existing SP programming in Ghana. The evidence draws heavily on desk review of available published and grey literature. The data show that SP provides an entry point for mainstreaming nutrition into other programmes. However, designing and coupling SP programmes with nutrition programmes remain a challenge in Ghana. Local SP interventions are predominantly designed as standalone services and therefore are implemented independent of each other. To increase synergy between SP and nutrition, including nutrition as an explicit objective of SP policies/strategies is recommended.