Since the early 2000s, countries have tried to lift people out of poverty with a simple program — giving them cash.
The idea is that a lump sum will help the poorest of the poor buy food, pay for school fees or build a business — like raising livestock — to make more money.
Study after study has shown these cash transfers are a reliable way to help families in extreme poverty build a source of income and support their own basic needs.
The West African nation of Liberia is one of the countries that has seen success with cash transfers. The average amount that the government gives to a needy household per year is $250, which goes a long way there. The money goes to one member of the household to manage for the whole family.
And it's usually a woman.
"One of our key design components is that we target the female in the house," says Aurelius Butler, Liberia's national coordinator for social protection.
Liberia, which is among the 10 poorest countries in the world, has a high rate of gender inequality. Women face harassment and discrimination and lack opportunities in the workplace. In many families, the male head of household typically controls the funds, says Butler, and may not give their partners the money to cover basic needs for themselves and their family — like soap or food. By targeting women in the cash aid program, Butler says the aim is to give them some economic control.
Some men were not happy with that setup.
"A lot of the men reported that they felt like they were being excluded," Butler says.
A different kind of "cash transfer"
So Liberia came up with a new approach.
With funding from the World Bank, the Liberian government and the nonprofit organization GiveDirectly designed a new cash transfer experiment: give both partners equal money and an equal say in how to spend it.
There were two goals, according to Sarika Gupta a senior economist at the World Bank and one of the lead researchers on a study about this project: help families generate more income and reduce household tension in a country where nearly 35% of women say they face intimate partner violence — higher than the world average of 27%. The results from the study were released in July.
In 2022, more than 2,300 households in the Maryland and Bomi counties of Liberia received $750 in four installments — more than double the amount typically given to a household in cash aid programs since both partners got an equal payout.
To encourage partners to share in decision making, researchers added a joint financial planning element for half of those families.
"The way joint financial planning works is, we sit down with the couple for about 45 minutes and ask them to detail their plan," Butler says. "Is it to fix something within the house? Is it to maybe just buy food, or is it to invest in education, planting or build a business?"
Since the literacy rate in rural areas is low, the researchers also created posters for each family to document their plans.
"It just had a picture of a family happy together, and then it had empty boxes for them to list their four top spending priorities for the cash transfer that was coming," says Gupta. The couples were also given a stack of stickers to indicate what they wanted if they weren't able to write things down: a stack of books meant education, a stethoscope and syringe meant healthcare.
"And the poster stays with the couple, and they can put it on their wall so they can see it. It's like a constant reminder of what they've kind of committed to," Gupta says.
Gupta and other researchers followed the households for a year after they received the cash. The results showed that planning works.
"Households that received the planning actually were even better off economically than households who received only the cash transfer," Gupta says.
One of the participants is Christian — who only provided her first name for the program. She works on a farm, and her husband gathers latex from trees for rubber making. In the joint planning session they agreed on spending priorities: education, food and home repairs. Christian used her cash to pay school fees for their five kids, buy rice and pay off debt. Her husband bought solar light bulbs and cement to patch their leaky roof.
There was another component to the study. Researchers looked at any past history of partner violence in participating couples, interviewing them before giving the cash and then checking in a year later to see if there had been any issues after the cash was received.
A surprising consequence
Researchers were surprised by what they found. For most couples, there were no reported incidents. But that was not the case for couples determined to be at high risk for violence based on previous incidents. Even though there was an increase in income from the cash transfer, there was also "an increase in intimate partner violence" — but only among those who'd received the planning session, says Gupta.
"It is quite clear that it's something in the shift about couples deciding together [that led to the increase in violence]," says Amber Peterman, an impact evaluation specialist at UNICEF who was not involved in the research.
The hypothesis that Peterman and Gupta share is that conflict may have occurred if one partner deviated from a plan they both openly committed to.
"Anytime one partner or the other maybe deviates from that plan, the other person kind of can call them out," says Gupta. "And so that there could be that kind of downside to planning" — especially in houses prone to conflict.
The planning also may have shifted the power dynamic from men to women, possibly spurring partner violence, Gupta says. The study notes: "This could either happen directly, if planning gave women more agency in how funds were spent, or indirectly, if planning triggered economic changes that gave women more power."
That's valuable information, says Peterman.
"We know that this add-on [of planning] actually did a lot of good at the household [financial] level, and so I think the question is, how could it be tweaked?" he says.
The researchers are hoping to do it again — provided they can get the funding — and with changes that could help ward off conflict.
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