Social protection and education
Using social transfers to scale up equitable access to education and health services
What are the impacts of social transfers on access to health and education services?
Authors:
K. Chapman
Publisher:
Department for International Development, UK, 2006
This paper focuses on the impact of one form of demand-side policy option – social transfers, particularly cash transfers and vouchers - on access to health and education services by the extreme poor. It also touches upon the broader contribution that social transfers make to human development outcomes.
Specifically, the paper describes social transfers and their relevance to scaling up health and education services and outcomes for the extreme poor; summarises the evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of social transfers in relation to health and education access and outcomes; outlines a range of factors, including service provision context, that need to be considered when assessing policy options in different contexts; sets out some of the country ownership and aid instrument issues; looks at the opportunities that scaled up resources has for social transfers in the pursuit of equitable human development goals; and concludes by identifying the gaps we still need to fill in the evidence base.
The paper concludes that experience from middle-income countries suggests that social transfers can make an important contribution to human development outcomes for the extreme poor. The experience from low-income countries is limited, but does justify wider pilot testing of cash transfers and vouchers in different settings, and scaling up and evaluation of promising programmes.
