In general, an overwhelming majority of eligible recipients opt to receive cash transfers from GiveDirectly. In Siaya, where GiveDirectly Kenya has operated from 2011 to the beginning of 2016, over 95% of recipients who are given the opportunity to be a part of the program accept it. In Uganda and Rwanda more than 96% of […]
Candid thoughts from staff, donors, and recipients on our work and the broader movement towards cash transfers.
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Does security make people relax – Cash in the News
This week, co-founder Paul Niehaus sat down with Inc.’s Kimberly Weisul to talk cash transfers, evidence, and basic income. On basic income he told Kimberly that in our pilot we’ll be testing things like: “does security make people relax or… take more risks?” Quartz also covered the idea of time-use and basic income this week, […]
Research
Measuring effects
Today we’re introducing a small but substantive change to the way we present impact evaluation results on our landing page. Previously we reported the size of impacts relative to average values in the control group (e.g. a 58% increase in assets); now we report the size of impacts relative to total transfer costs (e.g. a […]
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How this evidence convinced me – Cash in the News
This week in Salon Gleb Tsipursky discussed how the evidence on cash transfers and the story of a woman living in poverty helped change his mind on basic income. Meanwhile, Vox announced that basic income will be one of the topics at their Conversations conference and Ben Schiller in Fast Company covered Canada’s opinion on […]
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A few extra bucks in your pocket – Cash in the News
This week our own Paul Niehaus spoke on French radio about basic income and mobile technology in Kenya. “Kenya is already known as a leader in new technology to use to distribute its social benefits,” he said. In other news, Taylor Mayol in OZY cited GiveDirectly’s cash programs as a possible model for fighting poverty in […]
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People aren’t going to blow it – Cash in the News
This week Elizabeth MacBride argued in Quartz that humanitarian aid ought to be given to refugees in the form of cash transfers. “We didn’t really test things until about a decade ago in development,” said our own Paul Niehaus in the article, “we just now have the experimental evidence that people aren’t going to blow […]
Research
What is (and isn’t) in the new ODI review of cash evidence?
The Overseas Development Institute has just released a systematic review of the evidence on cash transfers, which is timely as I think we all felt that FCDO’s 2011 review had probably passed its sell-by date. The review is a massive undertaking, covering 165 distinct studies of 56 programs and reviewing impacts on a wide range […]
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Understanding the impact – Cash in the News
This week our own Joe Huston spoke to the Universal Income Project in San Francisco about GiveDirectly’s upcoming basic income pilot and recipient autonomy. “It’s hard to out farm a subsistence farmer,” he said “it turns out they’re pretty good at it.” In other news the Overseas Development Institute published a study, called “Understanding the […]
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Significant impacts on economic outcomes – Cash in the News
This week, the 2013 randomized controlled trial on GiveDirectly’s work, led by Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro, was published in the leading economics periodical, The Quarterly Journal of Economics. As Chris Weller summarized in Tech Insider, “the result: People who received the money were happier, more satisfied with life, less stressed, and depressed less often. […]
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Back in fashion – Cash in the News
This week the National Post, while discussing Ontario’s upcoming basic income pilot, claims that “basic income is the romper of economic policy.” More attention on this newest economic fashion is one reason why it needs to be rigorously studied. And in Devex Catherine Cheney takes a thoughtful look at the upcoming research on basic income, […]