The British finally granted independence to India in 1947 but the British India was divided into two independent states, India and Pakistan, in the acrimonious process of granting independence. Twenty four years after this landmark episode, another dramatic episode occurred in 1971 in the...

This paper investigates the short-run consumption expenditure dynamics and the interaction of public and private arrangements of ultra-poor and labor-constrained households in Malawi using an original dataset from the Mchinjii social cash transfer pilot project (one of the first experiments of...

In 2008, when food prices rose precipitously to record highs, international attention and local policy in many countries focused on safety nets as part of the response. Now that food prices are high again, the issue of appropriate responses is again on the policy agenda. This note sets out a...

This paper reviews a small community-based school feeding program launched in Togo in response to the 2007/08 food price crisis. The discussion focuses on the operational and policy lessons emerging from the program, to better understand opportunities for scale up and sustainability in the...

This paper uses household survey data collected in September-October 2009 on a nationally representative sample of 2,000 households in Bangladesh to examine the nature of shocks experienced by households over the preceding 12 months and the type of coping mechanisms that were adopted. The...

This paper examines the role of social safety-net programs in Bangladesh run by the government and nongovernmental organizations to mitigate seasonal deprivation in the country's highly vulnerable northwest region. Specifically, the paper explores whether social safety nets are limited to...

This paper reviews the experience with public works programs (PWPs) in several countries over the past 20 years to delineate use patterns and to determine the factors contributing to its use as a successful safety net program. The analysis shows that PWP have been used extensively in response to...

This paper is the written version of a lecture that draws principally on research on safety nets and operational experience with the implementation of safety nets, drawing heavily on the crisis of safety net programs in Indonesia from 1998 to 2000. As such it provides more views than reviews of...

This paper demonstrates that there are potentially large returns to having a social protection policy that stakes out a productive safety net below the vulnerable and keeps them from slipping into a poverty trap. Much of the value of the productive safety net comes from mitigating the ex ante...

This paper reviews the role of safety nets in transition economies within the context of a social risk management framework. The report discusses the objectives of safety nets, the legacyof pre-transition programs, developments during the transition period, strategic choices facing countries,...