IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/21175.html

Unconditional Cash Transfers: A Bayesian Meta-Analysis of Randomized Evaluations in Low and Middle Income Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Crosta, Tommaso
  • Karlan, Dean
  • Ong, Finley
  • Ruschenpohler, Julius
  • Udry, Christopher

Abstract

We use Bayesian meta-analysis methods to estimate the impact of unconditional cash transfers (UCTs). Aggregating evidence from 115 studies of 72 UCT programs in middle and low income countries, we find strong and positive average treatment effects on ten of thirteen outcomes: monthly household total and food consumption, monthly income, labor supply, school enrollment, food security, psychological well-being, total assets, financial assets, and children height-for-age. We examine seven specific theoretical and policy hypotheses, such as presence of savings frictions, dynamic effects, curvature of marginal returns, targeting effects, “nudge†effects, labor supply elasticity and related “dependency†theories, and contextual heterogeneity.

Suggested Citation

  • Crosta, Tommaso & Karlan, Dean & Ong, Finley & Ruschenpohler, Julius & Udry, Christopher, 2026. "Unconditional Cash Transfers: A Bayesian Meta-Analysis of Randomized Evaluations in Low and Middle Income Countries," CEPR Discussion Papers 21175, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21175
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP21175
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Barriga-Cabanillas, Oscar & Blumenstock, Joshua E. & Lybbert, Travis J. & Putman, Daniel S., 2025. "Probing the limits of mobile phone metadata for poverty prediction and impact evaluation," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    3. Vivalt, Eva & Coville, Aidan & KC, Sampada, 2024. "Local Knowledge, Formal Evidence, and Policy Decisions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10994, The World Bank.
    4. Karlan, Dean & Lowe, Matt & Osei, Robert & Osei-Akoto, Isaac & Roth, Benjamin N. & Udry, Christopher, 2026. "Social protection and social distancing during the pandemic: Mobile money transfers in Ghana," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    5. Ahmed, Akhter & Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab & Hoddinott, John F. & Roy, Shalini, 2024. "Does nutrition-sensitive social protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh," IFPRI discussion papers 2282, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    6. Zhiheng You, 2026. "Using Prior Studies to Design Experiments: An Empirical Bayes Approach," Papers 2602.20581, arXiv.org.
    7. John Hoddinott & Guush Berhane & Daniel O. Gilligan & Kalle Hirvonen & Neha Kumar & Jeremy Lind & Rachel Sabates-Wheeler & Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse, 2024. "Securing food, building livelihoods?: A 15-year appraisal of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2024-76, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Hidrobo, Melissa & Mueller, Valerie & Roy, Shalini & Fall, Cheikh Modou Noreyni & Lavaysse, Christophe & Belli, Anna, 2024. "Rainy day funds? How men and women adapt to heavy rainfall shocks and the role of cash transfers in Mali," IFPRI discussion papers 2301, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. Baird, Sarah & Özler, Berk & Dell’Aira, Chiara & Parisotto, Luca & Us-Salam, Danish, 2025. "Therapy, mental health, and human capital accumulation among adolescent girls in Uganda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    10. Vivalt, Eva & Coville, Aidan & KC, Sampada, 2025. "Local knowledge, formal evidence, and policy decisions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    11. Aiken, Emily & Bellue, Suzanne & Blumenstock, Joshua E. & Karlan, Dean & Udry, Christopher, 2025. "Estimating impact with surveys versus digital traces: Evidence from randomized cash transfers in Togo," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    12. Emily Breza & Arun G. Chandrasekhar & Davide Viviano, 2025. "Evidence aggregation with ignorance in mind: learning what we do (not) know for archetypes discovery," Papers 2501.13355, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2026.
    13. Papineni, Sreelakshmi & Gonzalez Martinez, Paula Lorena & Goldstein, Markus & Friedman, Jed, 2025. "Cash Is Queen : Local Economy Effects of Cash Transfers to Women in West Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11112, The World Bank.
    14. Pople, Ashley Charlotte & Premand, Patrick & Dercon,Stefan & Vinez, Margaux & Brunelin, Stephanie, 2025. "The Earlier the Better? Cash Transfers for Drought Response in Niger," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11138, The World Bank.
    15. Premand, Patrick & Schnitzer, Pascale, 2025. "Impacts and Spillovers of a Low-Cost Multifaceted Economic Inclusion Program in Chad," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11084, The World Bank.
    16. Hensel, Lukas & Abebe, Girum & Gerard, François & Caria, Stefano, 2026. "Mitigating the Consequences of Job Loss in Lower-Income Countries: Evidence from Ethiopia," IZA Discussion Papers 18537, IZA Network @ LISER.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21175. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.