T HE first major social security program in southeast Asia came into operation in India on February 24, 1952. The program, which was initiated on a limited basis, will cover about 2.5 million factory employees when it comes into operation throughout the major industrial centers by January 1955. The Employees’ State Insurance Act, which established the program, provides for medical services, con...

In Germany, individuals in need of long-term care receive support through benefits of the long-term care insurance. A central goal of the insurance is to support informal care provided by family members. Care recipients can choose between benefits in kind (formal home care services) and benefits in cash. From a budgetary perspective, family care is often considered a cost-saving alternative to ...

BACKGROUND Social grants have been found to have an impact on health and wellbeing in multiple settings. Who receives the grant, however, has been the subject of discussion with regards to how the money is spent and who benefits from the grant. METHODS Using survey data from 1214 young women who were in the intervention arm and completed at least one annual visit in the HPTN 068 trial, and qu...

INTRODUCTION Cash payments to vulnerable households and/or individuals have increasingly garnered attention as a means to reduce poverty, improve health and achieve other development-related outcomes. Recent evidence from Malawi and Tanzania suggests that cash transfers can impact HIV-related behaviours and outcomes and, therefore, could serve as an important addition to HIV prevention efforts....

Accumulated evidence from dozens of cash transfer programmes across the world suggest that there are few interventions that can match the range of impacts and cost-effectiveness of a small, predictable monetary transfer to poor families in developing countries. These results lead many policymakers to consider cash transfer programmes the ‘gold-standard’ in anti-poverty policy with some even adv...

Introduction: Cash payments to vulnerable households and/or individuals have increasingly garnered attention as a means to reduce poverty, improve health and achieve other development-related outcomes. Recent evidence from Malawi and Tanzania suggests that cash transfers can impact HIV-related behaviours and outcomes and, therefore, could serve as an important addition to HIV prevention efforts...

Previous studies find large cross-national differences in inequality amongst rich Western nations, due in large part to differences in the generosity of welfare state transfers. The United States is the least generous nation and the one having the most after-tax and transfer inequality. But these analyses are limited to the effects of cash and near-cash transfers and direct taxes on incomes, wh...

Many of the most important government programs make transfers in kind as opposed to in cash. Making transfers in kind has the obvious cost that recipients would at least weakly prefer cost-equivalent cash transfers. But making transfers in kind can have benefits as well, including better targeting transfers to desired recipients. In this paper, we exploit large-scale randomized experiments run ...