Cash Transfers, Microentrepreneurial Activity, and Child Work: Evidence from Malawi and Zambia.

Cash transfer programs are rapidly becoming a key component of the social safety net of many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The primary aim of these programs is to help households improve their food security and smooth consumption during periods of economic duress. However, beneficiary households have also been shown to use these programs to expand their microentrepreneurial activities. Cluster-randomized trials carried out during the rollout of large-scale programs in Malawi and Zambia reveal that children may increase their work in the household enterprise through such programs. Both programs increased forms of work that may be detrimental to children, such as activities that expose children to hazards in Malawi and excessive working hours in Zambia. However, both programs also induced positive changes in other child well-being domains, such as school attendance and material well-being, leading to a mixed and inconclusive picture of the implications of these programs for children.

Perspectives of adolescent and young adults on poverty-related stressors: a qualitative study in Ghana, Malawi and Tanzania.

OBJECTIVES: To define key stressors experienced and coping behaviours within poor agrarian communities in sub-Saharan Africa. DESIGN: Descriptive qualitative study incorporating inductive thematic analysis. PARTICIPANTS: 81 participants purposely sampled, stratified by age (adolescents and young adults) and sex SETTING: The study was conducted in villages in Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania. RESULTS: Stressors were thematically grouped into those directly related to poverty and the lack of basic necessities (eg, food insecurity), and additional stressors (eg, drought) that worsen poverty-related stress. Impacts on functioning, health and well-being and key coping behaviours, both positive and negative, were identified. The findings together inform a more nuanced view of stress within these contexts. CONCLUSION: Although participants were asked to provide general reflections about stress in their community, the salience of poverty-related stressors was ubiquitously reflected in respondents' responses. Poverty-related stressors affect development, well-being and gender-based violence. Future research should focus on interventions to alleviate poverty-related stress to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Government of Malawi's unconditional cash transfer improves youth mental health.

We explore the impacts of Malawi's national unconditional cash transfer program targeting ultra-poor households on youth mental health. Experimental findings show that the program significantly improved mental health outcomes. Among girls in particular, the program reduces indications of depression by about 15 percentage points. We investigate the contribution of different possible pathways to the overall program impact, including education, health, consumption, caregiver's stress levels and life satisfaction, perceived social support, and participation in hard and unpleasant work. The pathways explain from 46 to 65 percent of the program impact, advancing our understanding of how economic interventions can affect mental health of youth in resource-poor settings. The findings underline that unconditional cash grants, which are used on an increasingly large scale as part of national social protection systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, have the potential to improve youth mental wellbeing and thus may help break the vicious cycle of poverty and poor mental health.

Cash Transfers, Early Marriage, and Fertility in Malawi and Zambia.

There is increasing interest in the ability of cash transfers to facilitate safe transitions to adulthood in low-income settings; however, evidence from scaled-up government programming demonstrating this potential is scarce. Using two experimental evaluations of unconditional cash transfers targeted to ultra-poor and labor-constrained households over approximately three years in Malawi and Zambia, we examine whether cash transfers delayed early marriage and pregnancy among youth aged 14 to 21 years at baseline. Although we find strong impacts on poverty and schooling, two main pathways hypothesized in the literature, we find limited impacts on safe transition outcomes for both males and females. In addition, despite hypotheses that social norms may constrain potential impacts of cash transfer programs, we show suggestive evidence that pre-program variation in social norms across communities does not significantly affect program impact. We conclude with policy implications and suggestions for future research.

The role of productive activities in the lives of adolescents: Photovoice evidence from Malawi.

Adolescence is an important transitional period, separate from both childhood and adulthood. Critical physical and mental development occurs during adolescence, including emotional skills, physical, and mental abilities. Behaviors adopted during this lifecourse period have critical implications for adolescents' future health and well-being. The main research question of the present study is: what is the role of productive activities in the lives and development of adolescents in rural Malawi? As part of this study, selected adolescents from poor rural households were asked to take photographs of their daily (productive) activities. These photographs served as a starting point for focus group discussions. In addition to including adolescents, we conducted qualitative interviews with caregivers and teachers to triangulate and obtain a more holistic understanding of adolescent engagement in productive activities. The main themes that emerged were that 1) the work that is conducted by adolescent boys and girls inside and outside the household is not only perceived by adolescents as a product of poverty, but as a point of pride, as well as a potential means of providing for one's future, 2) there is a tension between the needs of the family and schooling, and 3) adolescent productive activities are associated with minor although not negligible hazards and injuries. We discuss that these qualitative findings help to better understand how social protection interventions, such as Malawi's Social Cash Transfer Program, may affect adolescent engagement in work and adolescent wellbeing more generally.

Poverty and perceived stress: Evidence from two unconditional cash transfer programs in Zambia.

INTRODUCTION: Poverty is a chronic stressor that can lead to poor physical and mental health. This study examines whether two similar government poverty alleviation programs reduced the levels of perceived stress and poverty among poor households in Zambia. METHOD: Secondary data from two cluster randomized controlled trials were used to evaluate the impacts of two unconditional cash transfer programs in Zambia. Participants were interviewed at baseline and followed over 36 months. Perceived stress among female caregivers was assessed using the Cohen Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Poverty indicators assessed included per capita expenditure, household food security, and (nonproductive) asset ownership. Fixed effects and ordinary least squares regressions were run, controlling for age, education, marital status, household demographics, location, and poverty status at baseline. RESULTS: Cash transfers did not reduce perceived stress but improved economic security (per capita consumption expenditure, food insecurity, and asset ownership). Among these poverty indicators, only food insecurity was associated with perceived stress. Age and education showed no consistent association with stress, whereas death of a household member was associated with higher stress levels. CONCLUSION: In this setting, perceived stress was not reduced by a positive income shock but was correlated with food insecurity and household deaths, suggesting that food security is an important stressor in this context. Although the program did reduce food insecurity, the size of the reduction was not enough to generate a statistically significant change in stress levels. The measure used in this study appears not to be correlated with characteristics to which it has been linked in other settings, and thus, further research is needed to examine whether this widely used perceived stress measure appropriately captures the concept of perceived stress in this population.