Cash transfer programmes have become an important tool for social protection and poverty reduction strategies in low- and middle-income countries. An increasing number of African governments have launched such programmes in the past ten years, especially to provide assistance to households caring for orphans and vulnerable children or to labour-constrained households. Cash transfer programmes in African countries have tended to be unconditional (i.e. regular and predictable transfers of money are given directly to beneficiary households without conditions or labour requirements) rather than conditional (i.e. recipients are required to meet certain conditions such as using basic health services or sending their children to school), which is more common in Latin America. Most of these programmes seek to reduce poverty and vulnerability by improving food consumption, school attendance, and nutritional and health status.
The Malawi Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programme was initiated in 2006 in the pilot district of Mchinji, providing cash grants to ultra-poor households without any able-bodied adult household members (‘labour-constrained’ households). The objectives of the programme include reducing poverty and hunger in vulnerable households and increasing school enrolment. A rigorous impact evaluation of the pilot in Mchinji district was designed and implemented during the pilot phase in 2007/08. Results from this initial evaluation indicated strong positive impacts of the pilot on household food security, children’s schooling, health, and household possession of productive assets (Miller et al., 2010). The Government of Malawi (GoM) has gradually expanded the SCT to six additional districts across the country (Chitipa, Likoma, Machinga, Mangochi, Phalombe, and Salima), although it only operates at full scale in Likoma and Mchinji. The SCT is currently operational in seven districts and reaches over 30,000 ultra-poor and labour-constrained households and approximately 103,000 individuals. The current expansion of the SCT presents an important opportunity to evaluate the adjusted programme with a larger sample size across several districts.