ANTICIPATORY CASH TRANSFERS IN CLIMATE DISASTER RESPONSE
The study found that the cash transfers increased the choice set of actions available to households. Households changed their behaviour in ways that altered the trajectory of the flood impacts and could have long-term benefits. Cash-receiving households were able to evacuate household members and livestock and stock up on food, with an immediate and large impact on food security during the floods. Households that received the cash transfer were 52% less likely to go a day without eating if they had received the transfer, compared to households that did not.
The anticipatory cash transfer did more than provide temporary relief during the flood. Its effects were still present three months later, impacting both current and future welfare. Children in households that were sent the cash transfers were 3.8% more likely to have consumed three meals in the day prior to the survey. Stated wellbeing was 18.7% higher. The anticipatory cash transfer also mitigated asset loss and boosted earning potential -- an early sign of recovery.
The effect sizes after three months are modest, but surprisingly broad for a one-off cash transfer amounting to two weeks of food expenditure but delivered during floods that lasted much longer.
Our results suggest three important takeaways for crisis response. First, early action in a crisis matters. Failing to act early has real welfare costs. The welfare impacts measured in this paper occurred before humanitarian assistance would have typically arrived, although we do not negate the value of post-shock support for recovery. Our results also show that anticipatory cash transfers can alleviate losses that are known to have scarring effects, such as on child food consumption. Second, even when acting early, speed of delivery matters. Households that were sent the cash transfer one day earlier relative to the local flood peak experienced a small improvement in adult food consumption three months later. This highlights the importance of upfront investments in preparing and targeting well in advance of the predicted extreme weather event, such that the intervention can scale immediately with the activation of triggers. Third, this unusually large-scale evaluation of a humanitarian intervention presents lessons for measuring the impact of other humanitarian programmes, in a context where there are real challenges to conducting rigorous evaluations and the evidence base is thus slim. Much more learning on crisis response is needed.
Image description: (Left) Map of the distribution of WFP cash to households along the Jamuna River in northern Bangladesh. The size of the purple dots indicate the number of households targeted in each union. Bahadurabad Station was used to forecast the water levels and activate the triggers. (Right) This image summarises the welfare effect of the cash transfer relative to the control group. Markers indicate the standardised mean treatment effect of receiving the cash transfer on pre-specified outcomes (red) and the sub-indices used in constructing the main outcomes (blue), with 95% confidence intervals shown. Solid markers indicate significance at the 5% level, whereas the transparent markers indicate that we cannot reject the null hypothesis that these effects are significantly different from zero. Covariates include age, gender, education level, household size, dependency ratio, house structure, UNFPA/FAO recipient status and land type. Union fixed effects are included.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE WFP
