As countries implement social safety nets programs, a range of technical hurdles affects their implementation differently in rural and urban areas. In urban areas, the focus of this study, living in is expensive and more vulnerable at economy slowdowns. Poverty can be more severe than in rural...

Most of the people in low and middle-income countries covered by social protection receive assistance in the form of in-kind food. The origin of such support is rooted in countries' historical pursuit of three interconnected objectives, namely attaining self-sufficiency in food, managing...

This book addresses the thorny and fascinating question of how food and voucher programs, despite theory and evidence generally favoring cash, remain relevant, have evolved, and, in most circumstances, have improved over time. In doing so, we take an evolutionary and pragmatic view; we are...

Poverty and crises are rapidly “urbanizing†. Yet experience with operationalizing cash transfers in urban areas is limited. This paper captures early lessons from a new generation of urban cash transfer responses to Covid-19 in eleven African countries. The analysis contextualizes...

This note discusses policy options for managing the employment impacts of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis aimed at relief and restructuring. The note pays attention to the labor market and institutional context of most low and middle-income countries where informality is large and where...

Debate on what should follow the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2015 onwards has mushroomed. A focus on "ending" poverty (however defined) is likely to form a central part of the future framework. This paper discusses MDG 1, income poverty. Our paper is a commentary written to...

Social protection has evolved rapidly both conceptually and in practice, and is now a key policy issue in humanitarian and development debates. However, debates have sometimes been misled by approaches that pay inadequate attention to context-specific factors, do not fully consider the sequence...

Social protection aims to provide a national platform for smoothly transitioning from a chaotic collection of shock responses to an institutionalized system for risk and non-risk management. For the poorest, the transition aims to move away from ad hoc, unpredictable relief to national safety...