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...

Despite wide use of women's decisionmaking indicators, both as a direct measure of intrahousehold decisionmaking and as a proxy for women's empowerment or bargaining power, little has been done to explore what such indicators capture and how effective they measure program impacts on empowerment....

Little is known about whether reductions in intimate partner violence (IPV) from cash transfer programs persist over the longer term. Using a randomized controlled trial design, we show that a program providing poor women in rural Bangladesh with cash or food transfers, alongside nutrition...

Social protection programs are primarily focused on influencing household behavior in the short term, increasing consumption to reduce poverty and food insecurity, and promoting investments in human capital. A large body of evidence across numerous settings shows that cash and food transfer...