Cash Transfer Evaluation

Cash transfer evaluation is the body of impact-evaluation practice used to measure the effects of giving money directly to poor households — conditional on behaviours such as school enrolment and clinic visits (CCTs) or unconditional (UCTs) — on consumption, schooling, nutrition, health, and broader welfare. Pioneered by Mexico's PROGRESA/Oportunidades programme in the late 1990s, which built a randomised phase-in into its rollout, the field has produced some of the most influential causal evidence in development economics and now spans dozens of countries and hundreds of studies.