Aug 9, 2017

Ashu Handa’s research in Zambia is featured on NPR in a story describing the impact of unconditional cash transfers in Zambian people’s lives. Handa is a Carolina Population Center Faculty Fellow.

Cash Aid Could Solve Poverty – But There’s A Catch
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/09/542357298/cash-handouts-could-solve-poverty-but-theres-a-catch

Excerpt:

Then officials commissioned a study of these pilots from one of the premier researchers on the subject, Ashu Handa, an economist and professor at the University of North Carolina. Handa runs a center called the Transfer Project that specializes in studying cash aid programs using the gold-standard of social science research – a randomized controlled trial in which you compare what happens to people who get the cash to an otherwise identical group of people who don’t. He’s done studies like this across Africa. But Handa says the experiment that Zambian officials asked him to design broke new ground.

…These kinds of returns are head and shoulders above what you generally get from traditional aid, says Handa. “I mean, I’ve never seen impacts so large in my life.”

Contribute to or follow the conversation by using the hashtag #NoStringsCash