Stress and cognitive burden associated with poverty constrain decision-making regarding investments in the future, which can in turn perpetuate poverty. We exploit the randomized roll-out of Mali’s national cash transfer program to estimate its impact on measures of psychological and emotional...

In 1999 Ecuador experienced an economic crisis that was characterized by drastic increases in prices and the eventual adoption of the dollar as its currency. While many reports show that household consumption decreased and poverty increased, there are no studies on the impact of the crisis on...

We examined the effects of Ecuador's Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH) - an unconditional cash transfer program that was rolled-out using a randomized design - on health and development outcomes in very young children. Communities that were randomly assigned to the treatment group began receiving...

Aid agencies often provide transfers in food rather than cash out of a paternalistic belief that food transfers will better improve household food security. However, evidence from Latin America shows that cash transfers often increase the share of food in consumption, counter to Engel’s Law....