This paper assesses the targeting performance of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP) – a large scale social safety net program that reaches more than one million rural Ethiopian households. Most beneficiary households do public works while a small proportion receive...

We investigate the impact of participation in the Public Works component of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program, the largest social protection program in Sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa, on schooling and child labor. Income from Public Works should reduce demand for child labor...

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...

We assess the impact of Ethiopia’s flagship social protection program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and nutrition security of households, mothers, and children. We use both pre-pandemic in-person household survey data and a...

Social protection programs are primarily focused on influencing household behavior in the short term, increasing consumption to reduce poverty and food insecurity, and promoting investments in human capital. A large body of evidence across numerous settings shows that cash and food transfer...

Economists often default to the assumption that cash is always preferable to an in-kind transfer. Do beneficiaries feel the same way? This paper addresses this issue using longitudinal household data from Ethiopia where a large-scale social safety net intervention (PSNP) operates. Even though...

This paper assesses the impact of Ethiopia's flagship social protection program, the Productive Safety Net Program on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food and nutrition security of households, mothers, and children. The analysis uses pre-pandemic, in-person household survey...

This paper assesses the impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP), the largest social protection program in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. Using Propensity Score Matching techniques, we find that the programme has little impact on participants on average, due in...