In this paper, we estimate the impact on female labor force participation of a massive conditional cash transfer program-Universal Child Allowance, AUH-launched in Argentina in 2009. We identify the intention-to-treat effect by comparing eligible and non-eligible women over time through a...

Can participation in safety net programs have long-lasting negative effects across multiple generations? Prior work shows a 1993 Dutch disability insurance reform which tightened requirements and lowered benefits for participants resulted in better outcomes for their children. We study the third...

Amidst the bleak picture of increasing joblessness and indebtedness presented by the National Sample Survey's employment surveys and debt surveys, a minimum standard of living for the nation's poor seems to be under threat. In response to this, recent schemes inspired by the Universal Basic...

We assess the non-contributory cash transfer systems in 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries to identify factors that keep them from reducing poverty and inequality. To perform this assessment, we analyze three dimensions of size (number of beneficiaries, size of transfer per beneficiary,...

This paper assesses the impact of social assistance benefits on household welfare in Moldova. Ignoring standard issues of impact evaluations such as selection bias, behavioral responses, unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity, an incidence analysis suggests that increased spending on social...

This paper analyses the distributive impacts of various regulatory and institutional settings of European schemes of social assistance. For this purpose, two sets of classifications of European schemes of social assistance are introduced that classify the systems according to regulatory...

Until recently, social assistance and minimum income benefits have received relatively little attention in the comparative welfare state literature. Relying on two new indicators, this paper examines the development of minimum income benefits across 26 EU and other OECD countries. The real...

This study investigates the impact of Indonesia’s flagship conditional cash trans- fer (CCT) program—PKH—on violent crime. Exploiting data from a randomized controlled trial and administrative data from the staggered nationwide program roll-out in combination with different causal...

This paper aims to assess tax policy reforms that can sustain universal basic income programs and foster long-term growth and welfare in a currency union that faces fiscal rule constraints and inequality. To address this ongoing government and economics' debate, we developed a Dynamic Stochastic...

While unconditional cash transfers have been studied extensively in developing countries, little is known about their effects in a wealthier context. Through a randomized controlled trial, we study the employment effects of a generous and unconditional transfer targeting low-income families in...