Social Protection and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Evaluation of Cash Transfer Programmes

This paper evaluates the eects of cash transfer (CT) programmes introduced during the 1990s and 2000s on food security in a sample of sub-Saharan African countries. We apply the synthetic control method to compare changes in the post-intervention food insecurity trajectories of economies aected by CT programmes relative to their unaected counterparts. The results suggest that CT programmes exert dierential eects on the prevalence of undernourishment. Although the estimates in the upper-middle income countries in our sample show mixed eects for the application of CT programmes on food insecurity, these eects appear to be important in low-income and fragile sub-Saharan countries. Robustness analysis via placebo experiments conrms the soundness of our results, and their implications for policymakers are discussed.