The Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) group, based in New York, is preparing a large-scale cash transfer study in Liberia, particularly focusing on rural farming households. Cash transfers will be delivered by GiveDirectly, and also coordinated with USAID, to be rolled out for at least two years. GiveDirectly has been responsible for other large scale unconditional cash transfer programs, namely in Kenya, and is applying the randomized controlled trial method to the Liberian study as well.

There have been other cash transfer programs in Liberia, such as the Cash for Work on Vulnerable Youth in Liberia, but “no positive psychosocial or economic impacts were observed”. This program, due to its conditionality, “was found to be undesirable and faced implementation challenges”. It was also managed by Innovations for Poverty Action, now innovating by participating in a basic income-style cash transfer study.

IPA and GiveDirectly are, therefore, recruiting senior researchers, program managers and office administrators. To this end, J-PAL – Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab – is also helping with providing ways to draw top human resources to this task. Already onboard are principle investigators Jon Robinson (University of California, Santa Cruz), Jenny Aker (Tufts University), Alan Spearot (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Shilpa Agarwal (India School of Business).

More information at:

Kate McFarland, “US/Kenya: GiveDirectly launches UBI experiment”, Basic Income News, November 17th, 2017