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The broad-ranging benefits of cash transfers are now widely recognized. However, the evidence base highlights that they often fall short in achieving longer-term and second-order impacts related to nutrition, learning outcomes and morbidity. In recognition of these limitations, several ‘cash plus’ initiatives have been introduced, whereby cash transfers are combined with one or more types of complementary support. This paper aims to identify key factors for successful implementation of these increasingly popular ‘cash plus’ programmes, based on (i) a review of the emerging evidence base of ‘cash plus’ interventions and (ii) an examination of three case studies, namely, Chile Solidario in Chile, IN-SCT in Ethiopia and LEAP in Ghana. The analysis was guided by a conceptual framework proposing a menu of ‘cash plus’ components. The assessment of three case studies indicated that effective implementation of ‘cash plus’ components has indeed contributed to greater impacts of the respective programmes. Such initiatives have thereby addressed some of the non-financial and structural barriers that poor people face and have reinforced the positive effects of cash transfer programmes. In design of such programmes, further attention should be paid to the constraints faced by the most vulnerable and how such constraints can be overcome. We conclude with recommendations regarding the provision of complementary support and cross-sectoral linkages based on lessons learned from the case studies. More research is still needed on the impact of the many variations of ‘cash plus’ programming, including evidence on the comparative roles of individual ‘plus’ components, as well as the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour pathways which influence these impacts.

Chile and Mexico experienced extraordinary economic and social improvements over the first decade of the twenty-first century. Nonetheless, the 2008–2009 international crisis dramatically affected these two economies via real channels. Both countries reacted to the external shock by implementing several measures. However – thanks to the policies implemented during the period before the crisis – the Chilean government enjoyed more fiscal space and was able to introduce a stimulus package twice as large the Mexican one. In particular, Chile supported families with children via the expansion of the main social protection programme, additional cash transfers to the poorest families with children and passive labour market measures. In contrast, the worsening of fiscal conditions pushed Mexico into a fiscal consolidation process since 2010. As a result, child poverty dropped in Chile while it rose sharply in Mexico.

As other countries, Australia was hit by the international crisis. While European countries implemented austerity measures worsening social conditions of their population and pushing the economy into a fallacious fiscal adjustment, the prompt reaction of the Australian government limited the possible negative effects caused by the macroeconomic shock and favoured the process of economic recovery. In particular, this paper provides an impact evaluation analysis at household and child level of the 2009 Household Stimulus Package which was composed by three main cash payments: the Back to School Bonus, the Single Income Family Bonus and the Tax Bonus for Working Australians. Using data from the 2008 and 2009 HILDA surveys, the results show that these cash payments reduced the risk of poverty and stimulated consumption expenditure. Nonetheless, only the Back to School Bonus and the Single Income Family Bonus were really important in achieving these goals, while the Tax Bonus for Working Australians did not contribute to stimulate consumption and failed to reduce the risk of poverty. Thus, the analysis confirms the crucial role of governments to protect the most vulnerable groups avoiding a dramatic deterioration of social outcomes and favouring a fast economic recovery when interventions are timely and well-targeted.

The risk and time preferences of individuals as well as their subjective expectations regarding the future are likely to play an important role in choice behaviour. Measurement of these individual characteristics in large-scale surveys has been a recent development and empirical evidence on their associations with behaviour remains limited. We summarize the results of measuring individuals’ attitudes towards inter-temporal choice, risk, and the future in a large-scale field survey in Kenya. We also examine the impact of a cash transfer programme on these preferences and expectations. We find very low rates of inconsistency in interpreting questions on time and risk preferences. Cash transfers alone do not appear to impact time discounting or risk aversion, but they do have an important impact on subjective well-being measures and on future perceptions of quality of life. These in turn may affect forward-looking decisions such as financial and human capital investment, although this is not explored in this paper and remains part of the future research agenda.

Together with the Innocenti Working paper on relative income poverty of children in rich countries (Bradshaw et al, 2012), this paper on multidimensional child poverty and child deprivation forms the background studies on which the Innocenti Report Card 10 is based (Measuring Child Poverty: New league tables of child poverty in the world‟s rich countries). The paper focuses on child deprivation in Europe and studies the degree to which it is experienced by children in 29 countries using a child specific deprivation scale. The paper discusses the construction of a child deprivation scale and estimates a European Child Deprivation Index for the 29 countries using 14 specific child related variables made available by the child module of the EU-SILC 2009 survey. The 29 countries are ranked according to the degree of child deprivation: the results show considerable differences between the countries. The (non-)overlap between child deprivation and child monetary poverty is considerable but limited. In general the results indicate where policy interventions can produce improvements.

The Chile Solidario programme is an avant garde conditional cash transfer (CCT) in the Latin American context, introducing innovative features aimed at addressing specifically the multidimensional nature of poverty. This paper, using data from the Panel CASEN Survey for the years 2001 and 2006, presents an impact evaluation of this innovative programme. Using matching techniques to compare participants in the programme with a control group, and a difference-in-difference estimator, its impact on various socio-economic dimensions of well-being is evaluated and results at the household- and child-level are differentiated. At the household level we find that the programme has a significant impact on lifting families out of extreme poverty and that it does not have disincentive effects on labour market participation. For children, we find that the programme has contributed to increasing participation in school for those between the ages of 6 and 15, and to increased enrolment with the public health services.

This paper presents and discusses child relative income poverty statistics for 35 economically advanced countries, representing all the members of the European Union, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States. As most of the data refer to the year 2008, the results partly reflect the initial impact of the global economic crisis as well as government responses. According to the data, Nordic countries and the Netherlands present the lowest child relative poverty levels, while Japan, the United States, most of the Southern European countries and some of the new EU member states have among the highest. Several factors are associated with the risk of poverty, such as demographic composition, educational level of household members, labour conditions, but the extent to which these factors influence the risk of poverty vary considerably across countries. Lastly, in several countries the role of government is found to be highly important in reducing child poverty.