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Cash transfers are estimated to reach between 0.75 and 1 billion people (DFID, 2011). Evidence on the effectiveness of these transfers in increasing school enrolment and health care utilization in Latin America (Gaarder, 2010) has spurred the wide-spread growth of similar programmes across many developing countries.

But there remain many unanswered questions about the impact of such social protection programmes. For instance, we still don’t know whether cash transfers work in weaker administrative environments which typify many African countries. And what are the macro level effects on a country? Do transfers lead to economic growth? The impact of a social protection programme on other outcomes, like HIV/AIDS, is another area where our knowledge is limited. Finally, there is the looming question of whether conditional cash transfers are more cost-effective than unconditional cash transfers.

With support from the UK Department For International Development (DFID), 3ie has awarded US$4.65 million for 10 new studies to investigate these policy relevant questions. For the Social Protection Thematic Window, 3ie and DFID developed a strong shared agenda to fund high quality research that captures the linkages between the 'protection' and the 'promotion' roles of social protection and addresses important gaps in our knowledge. The awarded studies assess the impact of key social protection interventions in countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Nine new studies fall into two clusters: cash transfers and public works programmes. A tenth study is an evaluation of a youth apprenticeship programme in Ghana.

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