Research – GiveDirectly

Study: Giving cash to mothers cut infant deaths in half

GiveDirectly — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Summary Here’s a 3-minute audio summary of the study and its findings from NPR: In rural Kenya, giving poor families a one-time $1,000 transfer cut infant deaths nearly in half, one of the largest reductions ever recorded for a poverty program. With global aid budgets shrinking and funders under pressure to do more with less, the findings point to cash as a powerful…

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America’s $30B/year aid agency is embracing direct cash to reduce poverty

Yonah Lieberman — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 15:31:21 +0000

In October, USAID released a position paper on Direct Monetary Transfers during an event at Center for Global Development that puts cash at the core of their development toolkit, framing it as an efficient and effective form of “market-based assistance” with both long-term and short-term impacts. This change did not happen overnight. USAID has spent more than a decade incorporating…

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Direct cash looks 3-4x more cost-effective in a new GiveWell assessment

GiveDirectly — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 12:26:48 +0000

For those unfamiliar, GiveWell is a charity evaluator dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities by carefully assessing evidence to help donors decide where to give. GiveWell funds charities that they believe save or improve lives most cost-effectively. They do this by assigning ‘moral weights’ to specific outcomes based on the subjective judgments from staff, donors…

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What we make of null and negative results from U.S. cash programs

Camille Parker and Matt Ruby — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 21:11:08 +0000

Yolanda spent some of the monthly cash she receives through GiveDirectly’s program in Cook County, Illinois on a trip to the zoo with her grandson. “It felt good because that payment helps me be able to do those things,” she said. “So I don’t have to say to my grandson, ‘Oh, we can’t do that right now.’” Nora in Georgia used some of her monthly GiveDirectly cash to move out of a mold-infested…

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Survey: fewer people support direct cash transfers than you may think

Tyler Hall — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 19:38:29 +0000

In May, GiveDirectly ran a panel survey of 750 Americans who fit our common donor profile to better understand their familiarity and sentiments around direct cash. Below, we outline the most relevant findings and how they’ll inform our communications and marketing strategy. Note: we’ll continue to update this blog as we further analyze the survey results GiveDirectly began building…

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Early findings from the world’s largest UBI study

GiveDirectly — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 21:28:23 +0000

Summary of findings 2 years in: Here’s a 3 minute audio summary of the findings from NPR: To learn about the most effective ways of delivering cash aid, GiveDirectly worked with a team of researchers to compare three ways of giving out funds.1 About 200 Kenyan villages were assigned to one of three groups and started receiving payment in 2018.

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For refugees in cities, large cash transfers support self-reliance

Rachel Waddell — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 07:45:00 +0000

For families fleeing conflict or crisis, the world is short on solutions. In the past decade, relief organizations have been forced to make steep cuts to rations provided due to budget constraints, while wealthy countries have welcomed fewer than 1% of refugees. For the 33M refugees unable to return home, building a new life in their host country can be nearly impossible.

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Evidence on how cash transfers empower women in poverty

Caroline Teti — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 08:17:00 +0000

Donations to GiveDirectly put power in the hands of recipients, 62% of whom are women.1 On International Women’s Day, hear directly from women and girls in poverty in Malawi about the unique ways that direct cash empowers them: This impact is more than anecdotal; research finds that cash aid lets women improve their lives in many ways. Below, we break down the evidence by story.

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Research on our U.S. COVID-19 program found little measurable impact. We’re adapting.

Alex Nawar — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 17:02:10 +0000

Between March 2020 and October 2021, GiveDirectly distributed $1,000 one-time relief payments to nearly 200,000 low-income households as part Project100, the largest privately funded cash transfer program in U.S. history. Researchers at University of Michigan ran two randomized controlled trials to evaluate this program, focusing on the impact on recipients’ material and mental well-being.

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We asked people in poverty how they prefer to receive money

Miriam Laker-Oketta — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 01:51:59 +0000

February 2023 update A newly published academic paper examining the preferences of low-income households in Kenya over the structure of GiveDirectly unconditional cash transfers found: In the past two years, 182 countries launched cash aid programs, recognizing the autonomy they provide people in poverty to make decisions for themselves. In many cases, however…

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