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Social cash transfers have mushroomed in the global South since the 2000s. This chapter maps the new landscape of cash transfers. What programmes have emerged in which countries, and how firmly are they institutionalized? How inclusive are the programmes, who is included, and who is left behind? Do cash transfers contribute to social citizenship? How do countries and continents differ? The chapter draws on a unique self-constructed database, which covers all identifiable cash transfer programmes in all Southern countries, and defines new indicators of inclusiveness. While the literature focuses on cash transfer programmes, the chapter focuses on entitlements to cash transfers (entitlement approach) and on cash transfer regimes (the ensemble of all cash transfer programmes in a country; systemic approach). The analysis reveals a massive spread of entitlements, with limitations, and great variations between programmes and between countries, indicating different notions of who is deserving and who is not.

Around 2000, poverty had moved to the top of global agendas, but there was no clear idea what policies would be appropriate. By the mid-2000s, a consensus among international organizations on social cash transfers had emerged. This chapter investigates what models of cash transfers were proposed by international organizations, and why, considering that global actors of all political leanings had rejected the idea of cash transfers well into the 1990s. The analysis draws on unique qualitative data on all major international organizations involved. It is argued that the idea of social cash transfers marks a paradigm shift in global anti-poverty policy, driven by pioneering country examples, sectional interests of international organizations, and new discursive frames. However, the idea of cash transfers was discursively reduced to four partial models that define the field to the present day, reflecting mandates of lead organizations and adding up to a fragmented and incomplete universalism.

In 2010, the European Union (EU) committed to lifting at least 20 million people out of poverty and social exclusion, using income poverty, severe material deprivation, and (quasi-)joblessness as metrics to measure progress on this goal. As part of a broader set of commonly agreed indicators, the EU also (crudely) measures the impact of transfers by comparing income poverty rates before and after social transfers. This chapter develops a regression approach to study the effects of transfers on material deprivation by predicting the material deprivation rate before social transfers. We apply the method to pre-recession and post-austerity EU-SILC data for Germany, Greece, Poland, and the United Kingdom. We find that, in addition to reducing income poverty, transfers substantially reduce the extent and depth of material deprivation. Changes in social transfers, therefore, have a twofold effect on Europe’s poverty-reduction target.

This chapter draws together the findings from the earlier chapters, depicting achievements, limitations, and backgrounds of the global rise of social cash transfers. Cash transfers have turned millions of the poor into rights-holders, indicating an entitlement revolution. Cash transfers bring material betterment, but also a social recognition of the poor as agents of their own lives and as contributors to economic development. The rise of cash transfers reflects far-reaching changes in domestic and global politics, namely a ‘socialization’ of politics, growing political commitments to the social, and powerful new frames. Still, the politics of ‘Leaving no one behind’ remain thin; categorically fragmented and particularistic rather than universalistic cash transfer regimes prevail, and political commitments are uneven. Generally, cash transfers are Janus-faced, reflecting social citizenship as well as social control. Based on the findings, the onion skin model of political commitments and frames developed in Chapter 2 is refined.

This chapter traces the historical origins of social assistance (including social cash transfers) in North and South, and maps the field in conceptual terms. It is argued that the emergence of social assistance was part of the rise of the modern state, and later of the welfare state, involving a bureaucratization and nationalization of poverty. Since the 1990s and the 2000s, poverty and social assistance respectively have been ‘globalized’: international organizations have turned to the issue, and cash transfers have spread across the global South and have even become an electoral issue. Drawing on Georg Simmel and T. H. Marshall, the chapter shows that social assistance may involve exclusions and stigma, but can be a vital component of social citizenship rights if society recognizes the legitimacy of the claims of the poor. The chapter also shows how social assistance has contributed to social citizenship in European countries.

This chapter expands on a phenomenon noted in Smelser's analysis of social change in the industrial revolution: the development of differentiated ties that cross household boundaries and involve household members in distinct forms of exchange. It focuses on the “circuits of commerce”. The circuits of commerce have four elements: boundaries around transactions, ties among participants, a distinctive set of transfers or claims occurring within the ties, and distinctive transfer media. Within the broad concept of circuits of commerce, the chapter identifies three types of differentiated tie: local currencies, corporate circuits, and intimate circuits. In each of these circuits are examples of the personal mixed with regularized media and transfers and ties that differ in intensity, scope, and durability. The analysis presented in this chapter shows how individuals bridge the unbridgeable gap between social solidarity and monetized transactions as well as the complex interplay of monetary transfers and social ties. The chapter also rejects the incompatability which is believed to exist between the world of intimacy and impersonal rationality. It also rejects the reductionist view that this presumed separation is simply a special case of some more general principle, whether rationality, culture or politics. Such approaches are believed to fail to deal with the degree of interconnection between various ties.

This chapter introduces the topic of the book, social cash transfers for the poor in the global South, and depicts the research questions, theories, methods, indicators, and data of the analysis. The research questions relate to what kind of social cash transfer programmes have been set up in the global South, how international organizations came to accept the concept and constructed models of cash transfers, what factors made for the global spread of cash transfers, and if cash transfers have brought social citizenship to the poor. Drawing on Georg Simmel, T. H. Marshall, John W. Meyer, and Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, the theoretical approach of the book combines sociological theories of social policy, constructivist institutionalism, and world society theory, to complement the dominant approaches from welfare economics and political economy. Research includes qualitative and quantitative data and methods, with a unique large N data set. A figure depicts the research plan of the book.

This chapter describes the development of the Social Protection Floor concept. It ranges from initial conceptualization in 2000, in the context of debates about the need for a global social floor, through to its being accepted as ILO policy. It examines how, en route to acceptance, compromises had to be made and changes in thinking introduced. These shifts included the change in the SPF being a defined benefit package to a set of guarantees to be ensured by governments in ways they see fit; the move from the SPF being a global social floor to being a set of national social protection floors and from it being a global social contract to something which would be essentially a national responsibility. The question is also addressed as to whether the SPF would primarily concern social transfers or access to services.

All major international organizations had rejected the idea of social cash transfers to the poor until the late 1990s. Why did they adopt the idea by the mid-2000s? It is argued that the 1990s witnessed new discourses among international organizations—on poverty, development, risk, human rights, and universalism—that created an ideational window of opportunity for cash transfers to emerge as a global idea. The new discourses provided new reasons for social security, by raising new global social questions and invoking new social responsibilities of international organizations and states. In particular, the right to social security, laid down in 1948 by the UN, was re-interpreted during the 1990s to require individualized welfare benefits for the poor. Powerful discourse coalitions and discursive practices propelled the new discourses. However, the move towards extending social security was checked by the enduring developmental thinking geared to achieving welfare in the long run by market means and macroeconomic policies.

This chapter sets out a theory of social assistance (including social cash transfers), which covers both the global North and South, and discusses the future of income security in the South beyond social cash transfers. It is argued that social assistance constitutes a small but vital component of social security and social citizenship—‘residual but fundamental’. It is further argued that social assistance is ‘fundamental but not comprehensive’, i.e. the challenge of universalizing social citizenship extends beyond relieving poverty. To confront the problem of inequality and get the middle classes on board, cash transfers need to be embedded in a broader, multi-tiered architecture of social security, which increases political support also for cash transfers. Still, despite the fundamental contributions of social assistance and the positive effects of cash transfers in many countries of the South, these programmes remain Janus-faced, entailing inclusions and exclusions, recognition and stigma, autonomy and social control.

Malawi’s Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP) is an unconditional cash transfer programme targeted at the ultra-poor and labour-constrained households of the country. The main objectives of the programme are to alleviate poverty, hunger, and starvation in the targeted households, as well as improving health, nutrition, and education conditions of the children living in those households. This chapter describes how the SCTP began, including the social protection environment at the time of inception through today. Two major evaluations have been conducted on the programme: the Mchinji Pilot Evaluation (2007–8), and the Malawi SCTP Impact Evaluation (2013–16), which is currently underway. Evidence produced by these evaluations has been a key driver of operational and targeting improvements, and has contributed to subsequent surges in programme growth in the last three years.

The chapter demonstrates that while the Nordic countries remain relatively affluent and egalitarian, inequality of disposable household income has been on the rise over the past 30 years. The increase in income inequality and relative income poverty has been strongest in Sweden and more modest in three other countries. In Sweden and, to a lesser extent, in Finland and Denmark, a reduced role for social transfers among the working age population has contributed to a decline in relative income levels enjoyed by the bottom deciles. Often in the wake of serious macroeconomic downturns, politicians have reduced the generosity of social transfers to improve labour market incentives. Even if these reforms have had the intended effect on employment, the increase in earnings has not been sufficient to replace the loss of social transfers.

This chapter discusses existing Citizen's Income and similar schemes, and also two recent pilot projects. Since 1977, Alaskans have received unconditional annual dividends from a permanent fund built up from oil revenues. Recently, Iran intended to replace food and petrol subsidies with a means-tested benefit, but has ended up with a Citizen's Income instead (though one paid to the head of the household, rather than to individuals). The chapter tells the two stories. It also describes pilot projects in Namibia and India, and their results: increased economic activity, educational achievement, healthcare, and built infrastructure. Both conditional and unconditional social transfers in Latin America are then discussed. The concluding section suggests a pilot project in the UK.

This chapter deals with redistribution by the state via cash transfers and direct taxes, which is influential on how incomes evolve for working-age households around and below the middle of the income distribution. It looks at trends in redistribution over recent decades across the OECD, and investigates via in-depth analysis of alternative strategies put forward by Atkinson (2015) applied to the UK how redistributive capacity can best be strengthened. One approach is to increase direct taxes in a progressive fashion and use the proceeds to enhance the generosity and impact of existing cash transfers for adults and children. More radically, such a tax increase and increased payments for children could be combined with a ‘basic income’ for all adults. The initial impacts of these measures on overall inequality and on incomes around and below the middle of the distribution are investigated via a micro-simulation exercise, and broader lessons for rich countries brought out.

This chapter describes a number of Citizen's Basic Income pilot projects and other experiments. It first considers the social dividend (a form of Citizen's Basic Income) distributed in Alaska, known as Alaska Permanent Fund dividend. The dividend has increased personal income, and therefore consumption and employment. The chapter then turns to Iran's cash transfer programme, which replaced subsidies on food and fuel with an unconditional cash payment of about US$40 per month to every individual. It then examines the pilot project in Namibia, which disproved the critics of unconditional cash transfers. It also discusses the pilot projects in India, and in particular the establishment of an unconditional cash benefit as an entirely pragmatic measure; social transfers in Latin America and elsewhere; and several experiments at various stages of planning or implementation. Finally, it asks whether it is possible to launch a Citizen's Basic Income pilot project in the UK.

Economic growth is significantly slower in fragile environments and twice as volatile as in other emerging economies. Backwardness also shows in exports, which have remained stagnant and non-diversified since the 1980s. We revisit the role of exchange regimes in fostering exports and economic growth and, thereby, in reducing political fragility. We use a DSGE model tailored to replicate key features of fragile economies: presence of frictions in market adjustment and learning, influence of external shocks, and the crucial role of governments in providing public investment and delivering social transfers to the population. Our DSGE model allows us to track the response of variables associated with fragility to shocks that are likely to be important in fragile economies. The simulations we perform below illustrate the types of general-equilibrium interactions that may complicate the analysis of the effects of shocks that typically affect fragile economies on endogenous variables that may influence fragility.

This chapter discusses the development of a static microsimulation model for the purpose of undertaking an anti-poverty policy reform. Microsimulation models, which simulate the legislative detail of poverty-reduction instruments, can be used to make social-protection instruments more effective in this objective by helping to improve the targeting of these instruments. This chapter describes firstly the structure of the dataset required for microsimulation modelling. It then creates a theoretical understanding of the structure of social transfers, and of the concept of a hypothetical microsimulation model. Although the model developed in this chapter abstracts from the population complexity described in Chapter 1, it allows us in a simpler way to understand the targeting and structure of anti-poverty policies. Some of the issues that arise in creating a base dataset for a microsimulation model are discussed. As validation, debugging, and error checking are paramount in model development, the use of a hypothetical family model to use for validation purposes is introduced. We define some concepts used to calculate the poverty efficiency of a social-protection instrument. Finally, the chapter undertakes a simulation of the development of a means-tested benefit.