Social ProtectionNews & Blogs

By Luciana Debenedetti, Jeff Mosenkis, and Rachel Strohm

In this fourth installment of our RECOVR Roundup series, we are sharing new findings and analysis from the RECOVR Research Hub and from our partner organizations—as well as links on what is happening in the Social Protection landscape in response to COVID-19. Read the first, second, and third installment if you missed them, and sign up for our mailing list if you'd like to receive this roundup series directly to your inbox.

New Findings & Analysis Ethiopia: The global reach of the pandemic

Female garment industry...

By Luciana Debenedetti, Jeff Mosenkis, and Rachel Strohm

In this third installment of our RECOVR Roundup series, we are sharing new findings and analysis from the RECOVR Research Hub and from our partner organizations—as well as links on what is happening in the Social Protection landscape in response to COVID-19. Read the first and second installment if you missed them, and sign up for our mailing list if you'd like to receive this roundup series directly to your inbox.

New Findings & Analysis Peru: Assessing the reach and effects of COVID-19 among rural people in the...

Research Associate Bonnyface Mwangi conducts a training on the Household Survey for the original UBI endline in Siaya, Kenya (before the COVID-19 study).

Editor’s note: IPA was working on a randomized controlled trial of Universal Basic income with GiveDirectly and Professors Tavneet Suri, Paul Niehaus, Abhijit Banerjee, Michael Faye, and the late Alan Krueger, when the COVID-19 crisis hit. In nearly 195 villages in Western Kenya all adults over 18 years old had been receiving basic incomes—either in a lump sum, regular payments for two years, or regular payments for 12 years (...

By Luciana Debenedetti, Jeff Mosenkis, and Rachel Strohm

In our new RECOVR Roundup series, we are sharing new findings and analysis from the RECOVR Research Hub and from our partner organizations—as well as links on what is happening in the Social Protection landscape in response to COVID-19.

New Findings & Analysis Key Decisions for COVID-19 Social Protection in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Who Benefits and How?

How should policymakers decide what type of support to provide to vulnerable citizens during the pandemic, and which individuals should benefit? This...

By Charles Amoatey, Elliott Collins, and Madeleen Husselman

In March, Ghana, like much of the world, adopted social distancing measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. Measures included the closings of schools and universities, suspension of gatherings of over 25 people, and partial lockdowns in major urban areas. 

So far, like most West African countries, Ghana has avoided the worst of the virus’s health toll. However, in low- and middle-income countries like Ghana, the pandemic’s socio-economic consequences may exceed the immediate health ones and even cost more lives....

How do we ensure that people who already live hand to mouth aren’t starving during lockdown? Should we even lock down? Should we reopen businesses—and how? How do we do distance learning well? Are cash transfers helping people stay home? Who needs cash transfers the most? 

The policy-relevant research questions are innumerable, and the need for policy-relevant rigor has perhaps never been greater. But with over 23,000 scientific papers on COVID-19 coming out since January, we have to ask ourselves: is the research supply actually meeting the demand?  

IPA is building on...