Art Appraisal Blog

MSC conducted a research study to assess what the low- and middle-income (LMI) segments in Uganda understand about COVID-19 in terms of awareness, preventive measures being taken, gender dynamics at play in their households, and the use of digital financial services during this time. We present our findings in this report.

This note describes how the Indian state of Bihar addressed the policy challenges to implement a cash transfer program for migrants and the lessons it holds for India and globally.

Financial institutions and governments have been working for years to leverage digitized G2P for women’s financial inclusion and economic empowerment. COVID-19 has increased the stakes, as governments look to use G2P programs to strengthen women’s resilience. New research from Women’s World Banking offers insights on Indonesia’s PKH program, the country’s largest conditional cash transfer.

Globally, the expansion of social assistance is among the most common public policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge of quickly determining who would be eligible for these transfers highlighted gaps in information about workers in the informal sector and their families and other vulnerable groups. This review of some early international experiences of scaling up social assistance in response to the pandemic reveals the importance of certain ‘assets’ such as a robust digital identification system and other key registries.

Around the world, cash transfer programs are being implemented by governments in response to COVID-19. Pakistan introduced the Ehsaas Emergency Cash Program, which requires mobile phones and national IDs to register. Using data from the 2018 Financial Inclusion Insights survey, we estimate large gender gaps in mobile phone ownership and national ID possession, leaving women are at risk of being disproportionately excluded from the program. To address this, the government should ensure women are more purposefully targeted, perhaps by reserving more slots for women or prioritizing women's registrations.

By 2015, several social safety net programs out of the more than 100 in Bangladesh were experimenting with digital payments, often through a single vendor. But there were more benefits to be gained if programs used a unified government payments platform to consolidate and simplify delivery. CGAP worked with other development partners on a proposal. This is the case study.

This case study documents what drove the Zambian Ministry of Community Development and Social Services to develop an innovative, choice-based digital payments system and how this new multi-provider payments model has worked in practice.

This case study examines how the Inua Jamii program, a program of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, gradually introduced payments digitization, then choice to design a program that has successfully scaled to reach the most vulnerable groups in Kenya.

How has this move from cash to digital affected beneficiaries of Bangladesh's primary education stipend? We conducted a field survey using both a quantitative questionnaire and qualitative assessments, with separate modules for school headmasters and mothers with children enrolled in the program. The objective of the survey was to understand the perception and experience of the disbursement of PESP through mobile financial services.