Evaluating the impact of unconditional cash transfers on poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment in Pakistan: a systematic review with meta-analysis

This study conducts a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the impact of Pakistan’s Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), the country’s largest unconditional cash transfer initiative, on poverty reduction and women’s empowerment. Using robust variance estimation (RVE) meta-analysis to account for effect-size dependencies and heterogeneity, the study synthesises quantitative evidence from evaluations of BISP. The findings show a modest but statistically significant positive effect on poverty alleviation. In contrast, there is no statistically significant evidence that BISP improves women’s empowerment, although individual studies report some gains in mobility and decision-making. High heterogeneity across studies indicates substantial variation in outcomes across contexts and measures. The findings highlight the limitations of relatively low-value cash transfers in generating transformative improvements in poverty and women’s empowerment. They suggest that complementary interventions and broader structural reforms may be necessary for cash transfers to produce more substantial and sustained improvements in household welfare and women’s agency.