Social assistance programs, including cash transfers, have grown rapidly in recent years and are now found in more than 130 developing countries. On the one hand, governments use cash transfers to enable poor households to reach a consumption floor and lift themselves out of poverty and, on the other hand, such transfers can also reduce incentives to work or invest as households fear losing government support if their incomes increase.

Moreover, these transfer programs have been key for all types of countries during the COVID-19 crisis. Scholars have therefore studied the different mechanisms through which social assistance affects households and this project aims to contribute to the literature studying the impact of social networks, cash transfers and social assistance programs in terms of how they affect household behavior.

This project has four lines of research:

1. Propose a model of optimal transfers and estimate the implicit tax that monetary transfers have on household income.

2. To analyze the different characteristics and impact of both conditional and unconditional transfers, and "labelled" transfers.

3. To analyze the impact of conditional transfers on education investment decisions.

4. To investigate the political and electoral impact of cash transfer programs.

The unconditional cash transfer program of the Georgian government will be used as a framework and, however, the results will be informative for scholars and policy makers in other developing countries. This research, therefore, can help elucidate the possible effects of these new programs around the world.

This project has a duration of 3 years: from 2021 to 2024. 

Proyecto  PID2020-120589-RA-I00  financiado por MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033