This article examines the impact on children’s education and labour of monthly cash grants targeted on ultra-poor households and designed to reduce poverty and enable families to invest in human development. It conducts a randomised community trial, with baseline and endline surveys of intervention and control households; verifies school enrolment; and completes key-informant interviews and focus-group discussions. Compared with non-beneficiaries, intervention children experienced a 5 percentage point difference in enrolment, higher educational expenditures, fewer absences, and a 10 percentage point decrease in labour outside the home. Qualitative data confirm the quantitative findings. Transfers to poor households had a positive impact. However, the Malawian educational system needs to be improved for short-term impacts to lead to long-term development in human capital