to Promote Inclusion, Opportunity, and Resilience

FIGURE 2.3: Cash Transfers with Accompanying Measures (“Plus”) as a Platform to Promote Inclusion, Opportunity, and Resilience

Economic inclusion programs (”+”)

Shock response programs Human capital programs (”+”)

Cash transfer program help manage climate change through adaptation and mitigation.16 Cash transfer programs rely on social protection delivery systems, with foundational identification systems, social registries, and payment systems, which also serve interventions beyond social protection, such as in agriculture, education, or health.

One of the key features of cash transfer programs is direct engagement with households—often the most vulnerable ones, but also the nonpoor in programs that rely on social registries as repositories of household welfare information. This allows social protection to deliver cash plus programs as well as other valuable services and messages. When cash is attached to co-responsibilities, these programs can create specific incentives for sound human capital investments, like keeping girls in school or uptake of key health and nutrition services. As such, social safety net programs provide a platform for other systematic behavioral nudges and catalyze the performance of other social sectors by stimulating beneficiaries’ demand for services.

Social safety net programs have significant impacts in line with their equity, opportunity, resilience, and jobs objectives. Social safety nets are not handouts that create dependence and passivity. Instead, they are productive investments that carry returns for individuals, households, and the economy at large. Recent evidence of strong impacts underscores the case for investing in social safety net programs, strengthening their delivery systems, and taking programs to scale.17

· Equity. Cash transfer programs have been found to have positive impacts on household consumption and reduce poverty. Evidence shows that households use cash transfers for productive investments as opposed to wasteful temptation goods, with spillovers to local economies and demand for retail, services, and locally produced agricultural goods. Analysis of several national flagship programs shows that consumption increases by $0.74 for each

U.S. dollar transferred, in line with the fact that poor households tend to have a very high propensity to consume, being budget constrained.18

ASP delivery systems ID | Social registries | Payment systems | Climate early warning systems

Source: World Bank. Note: ASP = adaptive social protection.

16 Ethiopia’s rural Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) serves as an example of a safety net program with dual mitigation and adaptation impact. The rural PSNP focuses its public works program on community integrated and participatory watershed management in Dire Dawa, resulting in improved water table and soil table as well as diversified household livelihoods. 17 Beegle, Coudouel, and Monsalve (2018) present a meta-analysis of 57 impact evaluations of 25 programs in 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. 18 Beegle, Coudouel, and Monsalve (2018).