The effects of cash transfers on adult and child mortality in low- and middle-income countries

Poverty is an important social determinant of health that is associated with increased risk of death(1–5). Cash transfer programmes provide non-contributory monetary transfers to individuals or households, with or without behavioural conditions such as children’s school attendance(6,7). Over recent decades, cash transfer programmes have emerged as central components of poverty reduction strategies of many governments in low- and middle-income countries(6,7). The effects of these programmes on adult and child mortality rates remains an important gap in the literature, however, with existing evidence limited to a few specific conditional cash transfer programmes, primarily in Latin America(8–14). Here we evaluated the effects of large-scale, government-led cash transfer programmes on all-cause adult and child mortality using individual-level longitudinal mortality datasets from many low- and middle-income countries. We found that cash transfer programmes were associated with significant reductions in mortality among children under five years of age and women. Secondary heterogeneity analyses suggested similar effects for conditional and unconditional programmes, and larger effects for programmes that covered a larger share of the population and provided larger transfer amounts, and in countries with lower health expenditures, lower baseline life expectancy, and higher perceived regulatory quality. Our findings support the use of anti-poverty programmes such as cash transfers, which many countries have introduced or expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, to improve population health.