UBC-DIBS co-founder Jiaying Zhao, U of T BEAR’s Dilip Soman, and ideas42’s Saugato Datta have co-edited a wonderful new book on “Cash Transfers for Inclusive Societies: A Behavioral Lens“. The book is now available! Here’s more from the authors:
The latest title in the Behaviourally Informed Organizations series offers practical advice on how best to successfully design, deliver, and evaluate efficient cash transfer programs, with a view to alleviating poverty.
While much progress has been made in reducing poverty worldwide – especially in the pre-pandemic era – it is fair to say that an unacceptably large proportion of the world’s people still live in poverty. Cash Transfers for Inclusive Societies sheds light on the widely prevalent cash transfer programs. The book asks these central questions: What is the state of the art in the development of welfare programs? What do we know works in these programs and what does not? How can an understanding of behavioral science better inform the design, delivery, and evaluation of welfare programs?
The latest title in the Behaviourally Informed Organizations series, the book develops a nuanced framework for how governments, practitioners, and society in general should design cash transfer programs to improve inclusivity, reduce poverty, and improve equality. It draws on field experiments and case studies to showcase past successes, while also building frameworks and developing prescriptive advice that we can give to practitioners who are looking to design a behaviorally informed cash transfer program. With contributions from leading academics as well as seasoned practitioners, Cash Transfers for Inclusive Societies presents a new model to policymakers to study and shift the discourse on poverty alleviation from purely economic factors to also behavioral ones.