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It has been a very exciting year for social protection! In 2019, my weekly social protection links newsletter reviewed 1042 materials in 43 editions. So here is a personal selection of papers articulated around 10 major themes. Enjoy!

1. Economic and other long-term effects

Daidone et al have a great article summarizing and explaining the economic effects of cash transfers in 7 African countries. Egger et al add another precious data point on the multiplier effects of cash transfers (I counted 12 such points for the moment): in Kenya, every $ injected generates $2.6 in the local economy.

Blattman et al show that after 5 years, a one-off cash grants in Ethiopia has fading effects. Similarly, in Malawi Baird et al estimate that the impact on reduced fertility of an unconditional cash transfers on adolescent girls rapidly vanished.

In Mexico, after 20 years of operations cash transfers ex-beneficiaries showed higher ownership of durable assets (Aguilar et al); 49.2% of them experienced upward mobility (Yaschine et al); they grew 2.8-4.1cm taller and have 5.3-5.7 more years of schooling than their parents (Gutierrez et al), with enrollment in secondary school increasing by 5-10 percentage points over grades 7-12 (Behrman et al). A 10-country review by Millan et al found that the evidence is strong on school completion, more mixed on learning, and limited on employment. Another paper by Millan et al estimate that 13 years after its inception, transfers in Honduras increased secondary education completion by 50%, but also rose the chance of migration by 3-7 percentage points.

2. Health, nutrition and education

Klein et al show that cash transfer participants in Buenos Aires showed higher success rates against tuberculosis (TB); yet Rudgard et al estimate that making transfers "TB-sensitive" would require an additional budget between $165M and $298M per country. Choko et al showed that in Malawi cash plus HIV self-test kits increased HIV anti-retroviral therapy compared to other solutions. Palermo et al find that in Ghana, combining cash and health measures increased enrolment in health insurance in the treatment group from an average of 37.4% to 46.6%.

In Ecuador, Moncayo et al show that a 1% increase in the coverage of cash transfers decreases mortality from malnutrition by about 3%. In Nigeria, Okeke and Abubakar estimate that cash reduced mortality of children in utero by at least 20%. Celhay et al found that cash increased the survival rates of birth cohorts exposed to the program by up to 14.7%. and Dow et al find that in the US, a 10% increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit or in the minimum wage reduces suicides between 3.6 and 5.5%.

In Ghana, Gelli et al found that the national school meals program improved stunting among children of 5-8 years (effect size: 0.12 standard deviations). Neufeld et al on the history of nutrition evidence on cash transfers in Mexico. And a paper by Evans and Yuan shows that girl-targeted versus general interventions in education seem to deliver similar gains, including featuring cash transfers both at the top and bottom among the most effective interventions.

3. Gender

Peterman et al summarize the impacts of safety nets on gender in Africa: safety nets perform well in reducing physical violence as well as improving psychological well-being, dietary diversity and savings. But changes in labor force participation are minimal. In terms of toolkits, FAO produced great guidelines on gender-sensitive cash transfers and public works.

A review of evidence on social assistance and intimate partner violence (IPV) by Hidrobo and Roy shows reductions in physical violence between 25-41% in Bangladesh, Ecuador, and Mali. Another brief by Heise summarizes results from 22 studies across 13 countries.

4. Crime

Tuttle shows that banning convicted drug felons from SNAP food stamps in the United States makes them more likely to return to jail. Sviatschi estimates that in Peru, cash transfers reduced drug production. And in Brazil, Machado et al find that Bolsa reduced homicide rate and hospitalizations due to violence by 8-25%.

5. Crises

Barca and Beazley estimate that it takes between 2 weeks to 14 months to scale up social protection in response to natural disasters. Bruck et al show that a new generation of 7 high-quality evaluations sheds light on social protection in fragile and displacement settings. Cherrier et al produced an excellent compendium on humanitarian-social protection linkages, while Seyfert et examine the trade-offs of integrating refugees into national safety nets.

6. Universality and targeting

A new book by Gentilini et al offers a framework to navigate the analytics, evidence and practices on universal basic income (UBI), while Banerjee et al discuss how UBI may address barriers like lack of credit, insurance or psychological factors among low-income people. Jolliffe et al show that SNAP, the American "floor for the poorest", has been sinking over the past 30 years.

ILO and UNICEF have an overview note on "universal" child grants present in 21 countries, while Kidd and Athias offer a critique of proxy means testing. In Indonesia, Tohari et al estimates that the poverty-based unified database of beneficiaries improved the chance of participating in 3 core programs by 117%, while Bah et al estimate that if all households were included in such database undercoverage would be reduced by one-third. Bonus: Ndiaye et al trace the evolution of the national social registry in Senegal.

7. Insurance and labor markets

Packard et al examines how social protection could be adapted to the changing nature of work, while Jorgensen and Siegel unveil social risk management 2.0. Guven shows that in Africa only 10.6% of Africa's working-age population contributes to pension schemes. The ILO has a fascinating "living document" laying out a number of options disaggregated by occupation.

A review of minimum wages in high-income countries by Dube finds "… muted effect of minimum wages on employment, while significantly increasing the earnings of low paid workers". However, a new compilation of evidence on minimum wage in low and middle-income countries by Neumark and Corella finds that "… when minimum wages are binding and enforced, and when they apply to vulnerable workers, the disemployment effects are most apparent".

8. Tech and financial inclusion

Gelb and Mukherjee take stock of lessons from India's biometric ID (Aadhaar) in providing inclusive services; Masino and Nino-Zarazua show that transitioning to electronic cash payments in Mexico increased households' access to formal financial services. In South Africa, however, Torkelson documents abuses in using cash transfers as loan collateral by a financial company delivering cash itself.

9. Political economy

Hickey et al have an amazing open-access book on the political economy of cash transfers in Africa. Mosec and Mo found that in Pakistan those receiving BISP cash transfers increased support for their political leaders and institutions, while in typhoon-hit Fiji Rios et al show that people receiving cash transfers are up to 20% more likely to be very satisfied with the government than non-recipients. In Brazil and Turkey, Zucco et al show that conditional transfers are only marginally more popular than similar unconditional transfers. Ciminelli et al find that reforms generating large short-term adverse distributional effects are associated with electoral costs for politicians. In Mexico, Cantu documents that cash-vouchers to be used in local supermarkets were provided in exchange for electoral support.

10. Cash plus and cash versus….

In Bihar, Khemani et al asked whether people prefer cash or other services: only 13% chose cash instead of spending on public health and nutrition; in contrast, if cash came in lieu of improving roads, preference for cash rose to 35% (see counter views). In Mozambique, De Walque and Valente compare the effects of a conditional cash transfer program with the sole provision of information to parents on school attendance: information provision is as large as 75% of the effect of the CCT.

Two papers – one on Ghana by Banerjee et al and another on Uganda by Sedlmayr et al – points to the power of combining cash transfers with assets and complementary measures (as opposed to individual components). Also, Carneiro et al evaluate an integrated cash program for 3,600 mothers in Northern Nigeria: after 2-4 years, the program reduced stunting by 8%. Bonus: Bedoya et al show that a package of transfers and assets in Afghanistan increased consumption by 30% and poverty fell from 82 to 62%.

















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Ugo Gentilini
Global Lead for Social Assistance, World Bank
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An estimated 266 million people worldwide are international migrants (see KNOMAD brief) and 47% of them are women (World Bank Gender Data Portal). On this International Migrants Day, December 18, we take an example from Indonesia to illustrate why a gender lens is useful for studying migration.

Indonesia is among the world's largest source countries for migrant workers, with an estimated 9 million Indonesians living and working overseas. A recent World Bank report notes that Indonesia's migrant workers are driven abroad by the lack of good job opportunities in the local labor market and relatively higher wages overseas. The latter is especially true for women. Female migrant workers make 5.3 times more than their previous domestic job compared to 3.6 times for male.

Dipping into harmonized cross-country sex-disaggregated data curated on the World Bank Gender Data Portal, we learn that only 1 in 2 Indonesian women are employed. Working women are predominantly self-employed. Only 42% have access to wage work in Indonesia, compared to 74% in Malaysia and 53% in the East Asia and Pacific region.



Male and female migrants face different opportunities and risks. An ongoing study by the World Bank evaluates the effectiveness of different ways of promoting safe migration practices. The baseline data collected from more than 13,000 Indonesians aged 18-40 suggests three key findings.

1. Few people know the procedures for documented migration, even when they are interested in migrating.

Only 12% of respondents who claim to be interested in migrating can name all the documents required to migrate (compared to 10% among those who are uninterested in migrating). There is no gender gap in information: men and women are equally poorly informed.

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2. Where people get their information is correlated with how much they know and how they would migrate.

Women are much more likely to say they would get information from informal brokers or formal private labor placement offices, while men are more likely to get information from government offices, the internet, or friends. This difference in information channels is statistically significant.

Respondents who get information from formal sources are more knowledgeable—nearly twice as likely to know the required documents—than those who rely on informal sources. Information sources are also linked to where people plan to register or apply to migrate: people who get information from (informal) brokers are much more likely to apply through them as well.




3. Time constraints may play a role in making women more vulnerable to undocumented migration

Women are more likely to register with informal migration brokers while men are more likely to rely on government agencies such as labor offices for their job search. What explains this difference? A clue may lie in the figure below. Women without young children behave almost the same as their male counterparts. In contrast, women with young children are much more likely to register with a broker than men with children. Overall, women are 25% more likely than men to say they would register through a broker and 38% less likely to say they would register with a government labor office, a difference that is almost entirely driven by women with children under the age of 15.



Household roles and duties are not distributed evenly between men and women in many parts of the world, including Indonesia. Women are usually disproportionately responsible for unpaid household labor, including childcare, which limits their mobility. Seeking out formal sources of information about migration thus impose higher opportunity costs for women, who face greater time constraints. Labor offices and other government agencies are generally located far from the rural villages that are the source of many migrant workers. Documented migration in Indonesia is a lengthy and difficult process, imposing further time costs on female migrants. Informal brokers are a more convenient option as they are more likely to be located within villages, and are willing to visit prospective migrants at their homes and assist them with paperwork.

Why is this important?

We know that childcare plays an important role in mediating women's economic decisions, including participating in the labor market. A working paper by the World Bank East Asia & Pacific Gender Innovation Lab shows that improved access to childcare increases female labor force participation in Indonesia by 13%. This data further suggests that childcare may also affect how women access information and opportunities.

This matters for workers, as the likelihood of undocumented migration is higher for those who use informal channels to learn about migration opportunities. The risks of undocumented migration are higher than those of formal migration and relatively higher for women. Women are more likely than men to experience emotional and physical abuse from undocumented migration, and like men, they also risk becoming victims of financial exploitation.

This data is a reminder that migration is not gender neutral. Women migrate for different reasons, to different places, in different ways, and face different risks and outcomes from migration than men. Policies that seek to improve migration outcomes must be based on an understanding of these differences, such as simplifying migration procedures and making migration information more easily accessible and targeted.


















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Daniel Halim
Economist
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Last year's suggested Holiday Reading was a great success, so here it goes again! The same qualifier applies: the selected readings reflect my own personal tastes rather than any specific external metric. The list is drawn from works published or accepted for publication in 2019. Happy holidays and happy reading!

The year of 2019 was the year of popular BOOKS in Economics. If you have time, pick up Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo's "Good Economics for Hard Times"; or Anne Case and Angus Deaton's "Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism"; or Raghu Rajan's "The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind". While these writings are focused on advanced economies, they serve as a reminder that higher per capita income while necessary, is by no means sufficient for people's well-being – a message that many developing and emerging economies may find relevant these days.

Coming to the more traditional medium of discourse in Economics, journal publications, many of you will want to read "Using Randomized Controlled Trials to Estimate Long-Run Impacts in Development Economics"(Annual Review of Economics 11, 2019) by Bouguen, Adrien, Yue Huang, Michael Kremer, and Edward Miguel. 2019. You will come away with a better understanding of why the 2019 Nobel Prize of Economics went to those promoting the use of RCTs in Economics: Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer (a coauthor of the above study).

In a different line of work, Melissa Dell, Nathan Lane, and Pablo Querubin examine in "The Historical State, Local Collective Action, and Economic Development in Vietnam" (Econometrica 2019) the importance of institutions for long-run development. By exploiting variation in state conditions across villages within Vietnam and using detailed historical data, they show how institutions affected norms, governance, and economic outcomes centuries after the original institutions disappeared. While the paper makes for captivating reading, it leaves one with a rather pessimistic outlook: how can countries escape the curse of bad institutions they inherited from centuries ago?

A series of other papers look into approaches for promoting development – institutional constraints notwithstanding. In "Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India," (American Economic Review 2019), Karthik Muralidharan, Abhijeet Singh, and Alejandro Ganimian show that technology can be harnessed to improve educational outcomes, especially among academically weaker students.

Another positive message from 2019 is that increased labor mobility contributes to productivity growth. In "The Aggregate Productivity Effects of Internal Migration: Evidence from Indonesia"(Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming), Gharad Bryan and Melanie Morten show that removing barriers to internal migration in Indonesia generates significant, if highly heterogenous, productivity gains.

The optimistic messages of the previous two papers are counterbalanced by the results of two papers that yield rather negative results. In "Experimental Evidence on the Economics of Rural Electrification" (Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming), Kenneth Lee, Edward Miguel and Catherine Wolfram report results from an experiment that randomized the expansion of electric grid infrastructure in rural Kenya. The results are disappointing: demand for connections is much lower than anticipated and among newly connected households, electricity consumption is very low. Overall, the authors find "no meaningful medium-run impacts on economic and non-economic outcomes."

Similarly, the paper "Tourism and Economic Development: Evidence from Mexico's Coastline," by Benjamin Faber and Cecile Gaubert (American Economic Review 2019) slashes the hope of many developing countries that tourism will be their ticket to long-run growth and development. The authors find that tourism provides a boost to the regions directly affected by it; however, the benefits to local communities are offset in the long-run by reductions in agglomeration economies in the rest of the country, so that in the end, the effect of tourism on the country's aggregate growth is negligible.

The above papers demonstrate why research is important! We cannot make progress unless we understand what works, and what does not. Papers showing what has not lived up to expectations are as important as those that document success.

While the international community tries to figure out ways to promote development, in the meantime it is imperative to assist the poor. How do we do this effectively? The paper "The Price Effects of Cash Versus In-Kind Transfers" (Review of Economic Studies, 2019), by Jesse Cunha, Giacomo De Giorgi, and Seema Jayachandran speaks to this question. It compares in-kind to cash transfers to the poor and shows that there are advantages to the former as they lead to lower local prices, especially in less developed villages. The paper's findings are particularly relevant to the World Bank in light of a closely related paper by Deon Filmer, Jed Friedman, Eeshani Kandpal and Junko Onishi on the effects of cash transfers on local prices in remote villages in the Philippines.

To finish on an optimistic note, the paper "Private Outsourcing and Competition: Subsidized Food Distribution in Indonesia" (Journal of Political Economy 2019) by Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Jordan Kyle, Benjamin Olken, and Sudarno Sumatro, examines Indonesia's largest transfer program and finds that outsourcing the last mile of food delivery to the private sector reduces operating costs without sacrificing quality. A small step towards increasing efficiency while curtailing rent extraction.

Enjoy! I wish you a very happy 2020 and look forward to next year's research.

















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Pinelopi Goldberg
Former Chief Economist, World Bank Group
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V Baskar


September 09, 2021

You could also come out with a separate list of publications from the studies carried out and reported in the various publications of IMG & WORLD BANK.