Gender-based violence (GBV) has substantial individual and collective costs that disproportionately affect poorer women and girls and can constrain the impact of social programs. Globally, GBV is a drain on human capital development, poverty reduction, and growth. GBV also undermines the core...

Poverty has been declining in Sub-Saharan Africa, but millions are still poor or vulnerable. To address this ongoing and complex problem, all countries in the region have now deployed social safety net programs as part of their core development plans. The number of programs has skyrocketed since...

This paper examines the role of social protection (SP) in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), given their particular structural, human resource and capacity constraints. While it focuses on SIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean, the lessons may be relevant to other SIDS with similar...

The analysis of targeting of cash benefits is typically silent on whether any success is due to encouraging claims from the poor or to the decisions of administrators on the claims they receive. By contrast, the paper models the probabilities of households' knowledge of a new social assistance...

The Sahel region of Africa faces multiple crises, which further compound structural economic and human development challenges. The Sahel is one of the world's poorest regions and displays some of the lowest levels of human capital globally. Violence and insecurity in the Sahel have significantly...

Falling output and living standards have pushed countries in transition from the socialist system to re-consider how best to target public resources on those in need. The paper investigates the workings of a new social assistance benefit in Uzbekistan, the largest of the former Soviet Central...