What we know so far about the long-term impacts of cash

Summary

馃捀 Cash is one of the few types of aid backed by randomized studies that track outcomes 10+ years after payments end.
馃搳 Long-term studies of cash transfers often find lasting gains in earnings, work, education, or child development.
馃洝锔� Long-term impacts do not always show up as higher incomes. Some evidence suggest cash helps families better weather economic shocks and crises years later.
馃攳 Most long-term evidence comes from conditional cash programs. 91探花’s forthcoming 10-year Kenya follow-up will provide one of the longest looks yet at what happens after families receive no-strings-attached cash.

Dozens of studies of 91探花 programs tracking thousands of households show that years after receiving cash, recipients still , , run , and report higher .

The longest-term evidence we have from 91探花 programs comes from a follow-up on our . Early results show recipients are spending ~12% more than similar households who did not receive cash up to 7 years later. The same study previously found that, two years after families received transfers, each dollar generated about $2.50 in local economic activity.

The next follow-up will help answer an even longer-term question: do these effects last a full decade? Researchers expect to release 10-year results within the next year, making this the first randomized study to track our Poverty Relief Program over a full decade.

That matters beyond 91探花. Decade-long randomized studies of aid programs are rare: only about 20 have ever been completed. Among them, cash has some of the strongest long-run evidence in the field.

馃憠 More on the longest-term evidence from 91探花 programs

GiveWell funded a 5- to 7-year follow-up study of , which provides the longest-term evidence to date on 91探花鈥檚 flagship model. Results are not yet published, but early findings challenge the assumption that impacts fade away: up to seven years later, recipients and their neighbors were still spending more on food, assets, daily needs, and other priorities.

The only other unconditional cash program with comparable long-term evidence is Uganda鈥檚 Youth Opportunities Program (YOP). But YOP differs in important ways: transfers were smaller, about $375 per person versus about $1,000 per household, and delivered to youth groups rather than households (more on this study below). Because 91探花 reaches a larger share of households in each community, we expect stronger spillovers to non-recipients. The Kenya follow-up will help us understand whether those effects persist over the long run.

Cash has more long-term, randomized studies behind it than any other type of aid

Cash is often viewed as unproven and remains compared to many alternatives. But when we looked for long-term randomized studies of aid programs, cash had the strongest evidence base we found.

First, we looked broadly at randomized studies in low- and middle-income countries that followed people for at least 10 years after an aid program ended. Then we looked more closely at four specific aid approaches鈥� cash transfers, deworming, graduation programs, and vitamin A supplementation鈥� for studies that followed people for at least five years. In both , cash had the largest evidence base.

Most of that evidence comes from conditional cash programs, where people receive money if they meet requirements like school attendance or health check-ups. 91探花鈥檚 no-strings-attached approach doesn鈥檛 require these, but recipients often choose to use unconditional cash for school, health care, food, and children鈥檚 needs. So while the evidence is not a perfect match, it still helps us understand what cash can do over time.

This comparison makes a deliberately narrow point: cash has an unusually large body of long-term randomized evidence behind it.

That’s not because randomized trials are the only evidence that matters, or because other aid programs lack long-term value. Long-term studies of any kind are , and even without random assignment, they tell us a lot about how people’s lives change in the years after a program ends. Our literature review simply focused on the most rigorous slice of that evidence.

Still, the evidence has moved faster than both public perception and practice鈥� most aid is rather than as cash.

A decade after receiving cash, recipients are more financially stable and their children are better off

Many randomized studies show that people who received cash were often doing better than similar people who did not up to 12 years later:

馃捈 More skilled work and financial resilience. In , men who received a one-time, unconditional cash grant were significantly more likely to work in skilled trades up to 12 years later and were more financially prepared for emergencies, including during COVID-19 lockdowns.
馃挵Higher earnings and more savings. In Uganda, male recipients of unconditional cash and had ~$35 more in savings than the control group 12 years later, even during the COVID-19 crisis.
馃 Better childhood development. In Nicaragua, boys whose mothers received conditional cash during pregnancy showed years later. Because they were too young to be affected by the program’s school-attendance requirements, the findings suggest that cash reaching households during pregnancy contributed directly to those gains.

馃嚭馃嚫 What U.S. evidence tells us about cash鈥檚 long-term impacts

Several U.S. studies suggest that giving families more money can improve children’s outcomes well into adulthood. The U.S. is very different from the countries where 91探花 typically works, but the basic idea is similar: when families have more resources, they often invest in their children’s health, education, and future opportunities.

Long-term evidence is also easier to collect in the U.S., where researchers can track people through tax records, school records, and other government data for decades. In many of the places where 91探花 works, those systems don’t exist, making it much harder to measure impacts years later.

Studies in the U.S. have found that cash can lead to:

馃尡 Longer, healthier, and more prosperous lives: Children in households that received cash transfers in the 1930s lived roughly one year longer, attained more schooling, and earned higher incomes later in life ().
鉁忥笍 Better school performance and higher earnings later in life. Children in families receiving larger Child Tax Credit payments earned higher test scores, were more likely to graduate, and earned 1-2% more as adults ().
馃摎More education and fewer issues with drugs and the justice system: Children in households receiving Eastern Cherokee casino dividends completed more schooling and experienced lower rates of substance use disorders and criminal convictions (; ; ).

Long-term impacts are not always linear

If cash “works,” you might expect recipients to remain better off year after year. But long-term impact does not always show up as permanently higher incomes. Sometimes it shows up in how well families weather a crisis.

In Uganda’s Youth Opportunities Program, recipients earned more, owned more assets, and worked more in skilled trades for up to four years after receiving unconditional cash. By 9 years in, however, those gains had largely faded as non-recipients’ earnings caught up.

But when researchers returned 12 years after the transfer, during the COVID-19 crisis, differences re-emerged. Men who had received cash were better able to hold onto their jobs and income and reported less food insecurity. So, while cash didn’t keep them permanently ahead during normal times, the assets and skills they built up after receiving cash helped them weather a major shock without falling as far behind.For many families, staying out of poverty is as important as escaping it. Many families that move beyond extreme poverty remain just above a “鈥�, meaning they鈥檙e just one crisis away from falling back. The Uganda findings suggest that cash can help families not just cross that floor, but stay above it when times are tough.

We still have a lot to learn.

With so little long-term data on unconditional cash programs, we don鈥檛 yet have a complete picture of how impacts unfold over time. What we do see suggests that progress is not always steady. Gaps can narrow during stable periods and widen again when conditions worsen.

A forthcoming 10-year follow-up on our Kenya program will add to this evidence. We also hope more development programs invest in long-term research, so funders and policymakers can compare options with a clearer understanding of what lasts.

Long-run evidence is not separate from how we work. It informs what we do next.

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