The Lure of Tequila and the Bestowing of Motherly Love: Does it Matter Whether Public Cash Transfers are Given to Women or Men? Evidence from the PROGRESA and PROCAMPO Programs in Rural Mexico

This paper aims at evaluating the impact of two different cash transfer programs in rural Mexico - Procampo and Progresa - on total consumption, food consumption and other outcomes like investment, schooling and health care. Progresa is targeted to women, while Procampo goes to farmers, mostly men and many of which are poor. We show that both programs boost consumption. However, they obtain this effect through different channels. Progresa is destined to consumption expenditure directly, while Procampo, which is paid to landholders, boosts investments and needs time to produce its benefits. Furthermore, we separate program from gender effects and show that cash transfer programs targeted to men are beneficial only when the recipients own means of production. This suggest that policy makers should take into account the relationship between gender and ownership of assets when designing poverty reduction programs.gender effect, program effect, rural poverty, Labor and Human Capital,

The Household and Individual-Level Productive Impacts of Cash Transfer Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Is Graduation from Social Safety Nets Possible? Evidence from Sub?Saharan Africa

In the last decade social cash transfer programmes have become extremely popular in sub?Saharan Africa, and are often portrayed as an instrument that can facilitate graduation out of poverty. The evidence on whether social cash transfers have had actual effects on graduation, however, is limited. This article provides a cross?country reflection of the potential effects of social cash transfers on graduation, drawing from impact evaluation results of cash transfer programmes in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho and Zambia. We analyse whether social cash transfers have improved the likelihood of graduation, through increased productivity, income generation and resilience to shocks. We identify which factors in terms of programme implementation and household characteristics can increase the likelihood of cash transfer programmes facilitating graduation from poverty

Cash Transfer Programme, Productive Activities and Labour Supply: Evidence from a Randomised Experiment in Kenya

This paper reports analysis of the impact of Kenya’s Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children Programme on the household decisions on productive activities using data from a randomized experimental design. Results show that the programme had a positive and significant impact on food consumption coming from home production, accumulation of productive assets, especially on the ownership of small livestock and on formation of nonfarm enterprise, especially for females. The programme has provided more flexibility to families in terms of labour allocation decisions, particularly for those who are geographically isolated. The programme was also found to have reduced child labour, an important objective of the programme. However we find very little impact of the programme on direct indicators of crop production

One plus one can be greater than two: Evaluating synergies of development programmes in Malawi

This paper investigates the interplay between the Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP) and the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) in Malawi. We take advantage of data collected from a seventeen-month evaluation of a sample of households eligible to receive SCTP, which also provided information about inclusion into FISP. We estimate two types of synergies: i) the complementarity between SCTP and FISP, i.e. whether the impact of both interventions run together is larger than the sum of the impacts of these interventions when run separately, and ii) the incremental impact of receiving FISP when a household already receives SCTP, as well as the incremental impact of receiving SCTP when a household already receives FISP. The analysis shows that there are synergies between the two policy interventions, mainly in terms of incremental impact of each programme over the other, in increasing expenditure, agricultural production and livestock

Anomalous Microwave Emission from the HII region RCW175

We present evidence for anomalous microwave emission in the RCW175 \hii region. Motivated by 33 GHz 13\arcmin resolution data from the Very Small Array (VSA), we observed RCW175 at 31 GHz with the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) at a resolution of 4\arcmin. The region consists of two distinct components, G29.0-0.6 and G29.1-0.7, which are detected at high signal-to-noise ratio. The integrated flux density is $5.97\pm0.30$ Jy at 31 GHz, in good agreement with the VSA. The 31 GHz flux density is $3.28\pm0.38$ Jy ($8.6\sigma$) above the expected value from optically thin free-free emission based on lower frequency radio data and thermal dust constrained by IRAS and WMAP data. Conventional emission mechanisms such as optically thick emission from ultracompact \hii regions cannot easily account for this excess. We interpret the excess as evidence for electric dipole emission from small spinning dust grains, which does provide an adequate fit to the data.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, submmited to ApJ Letter

Shaping cash transfer impacts through “soft-conditions”: evidence from Lesotho

Cash transfer programmes have been shown to have positive effects on a variety of outcomes. While much of the literature focuses on the role of conditionality in achieving desired impact, this paper focuses on the role of ‘soft conditionality’ implemented through both ‘labelling’ and ‘messaging’ in evaluating the impact of the Child Grants Program in Lesotho, an unconditional cash transfer programme targeting poor households with orphans and vulnerable children. Beneficiary households received a clear message that the transfer should be spent on the interest and needs of children. Our findings suggest that ‘soft conditionality’ does play a role in increasing expenditure for children, especially on education, clothing and footwear. Results indicate in fact that transfer income is spent differently from general income as it exerts both an income and a substitution effect. This behavioural change is confirmed by comparing the ex-ante expected behaviours with the ex-post actual response to the programme. We find that for expenditure categories linked to the well-being of children the expost response was much higher than the ex-ante expected behaviour

Structural insights into cis element recognition of non-polyadenylated RNAs by the Nab3-RRM

Transcription termination of non-polyadenylated RNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae occurs through the action of the Nrd1–Nab3–Sen1 complex. Part of the decision to terminate via this pathway occurs via direct recognition of sequences within the nascent transcript by RNA recognition motifs (RRMs) within Nrd1 and Nab3. Here we present the 1.6 Å structure of Nab3-RRM bound to its UCUU recognition sequence. The crystal structure reveals clear density for a UCU trinucleotide and a fourth putative U binding site. Nab3-RRM establishes a clear preference for the central cytidine of the UCUU motif, which forms pseudo-base pairing interactions primarily through hydrogen bonds to main chain atoms and one serine hydroxyl group. Specificity for the flanking uridines is less defined; however, binding experiments confirm that these residues are also important for high affinity binding. Comparison of the Nab3-RRM to other structures of RRMs bound to polypyrimidine RNAs showed that this mode of recognition is similar to what is observed for the polypyrimidine-tract binding RRMs, and that the serine residue involved in pseudo-base pairing is only found in RRMs that bind to polypyrimidine RNAs that contain a cytosine base, suggesting a possible mechanism for discriminating between cytosine and uracil bases in RRMs that bind to polypyrimidine-containing RNA

Cash transfers for sustainable rural livelihoods? Examining the long-term productive effects of the Child Support Grant in South Africa

Cash transfers have received increased scholarly and policy attention, as a means of reducing poverty in the global South. While cash transfers are primarily intended to prevent impoverishment and deprivation, several studies suggest they can have 'productive' impacts, contributing to building sustainable livelihoods. However, pilot projects of unconditional cash transfers have often been too brief or too recent to determine how small, but regular, transfers can improve rural livelihoods over time. This paper explores potential long-term productive effects of cash transfers on rural household's livelihoods. This is done through revisiting, after 14 years, all (273) households in two South African villages included in an extensive livelihood and asset survey in 2002. That survey predated the phasing in of the Child Support Grant (CSG), targeted at impoverished children. When re-surveyed in 2016, some households had cumulatively received significant, while others little or no CSG income. Multivariate regression analysis shows how households that received more CGS income were more likely to invest in productive assets (e.g. small ploughs), and engage in poultry, staple crop and vegetable production