Most impact evaluations of conditional cash transfers and unconditional cash transfers focus on the returns to increased human capital investments that will be reaped largely or exclusively in the future (that is, when current children have increased productivity as adults). But such programs...

It is widely recognized that there is a continuum of physical growth and social-emotional and cognitive development across the life course, from the preconception health status of the mother through adulthood. This paper lays out a core economic model that illustrates the interrelationship of...

There is very limited experimental evidence of the impact of large-scale, government-led school meals programs on child educational achievements in Sub-Saharan Africa. We address this gap by reporting treatment effects from a nationwide randomized trial of the Government of Ghana’s school...

Agricultural insurance has attracted considerable interest in recent years. Innovations in agricultural index insurance have raised expectations that the private sector can overcome shortcomings associated with more traditional indemnity-based products like multi-peril crop insurance, and...

Social protection programs such as cash or food transfers support current poverty and inequality reduction goals, while at the same time enhance future productivity through human capital investments. Yet, the quantification of their overall productivity and equity benefits is challenging. We...

The debate over whether to provide food assistance and the form that this assistance should take has a long history in economics. Despite the ongoing debate, little rigorous evidence exists that compares food assistance in the form of cash versus in-kind. This paper uses a randomized evaluation...

Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is a large-scale social protection intervention aimed at improving food security and stabilizing asset levels. The PSNP contains a mix of public works employment and unconditional transfers. It is a well-targeted program; however, several years...

Interest has grown in leveraging cash transfer programs with nutrition interventions to improve child nutrition at scale. However, little is known about how doing so affects household economic well-being. We study a program providing cash or food transfers, with or without nutrition behavior...

Little is known about whether reductions in intimate partner violence (IPV) from cash transfer programs persist over the longer term. Using a randomized controlled trial design, we show that a program providing poor women in rural Bangladesh with cash or food transfers, alongside nutrition...

Although agriculture is widely thought to be an important sector for influencing nutrition outcomes, there is a remarkable dearth of rigorous evidence on the role of large scale agricultural programs, such as Asia's Green Revolution. This paper therefore analyzes agriculture and nutrition...