The Role of Unconditional Cash Transfers in the Decision to Migrate - Evidence From the Lesotho Child Grant Programme

Sabrina Kouba , The United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology

This study explores the relationship between the Lesotho Child Grant Programme (CGP) - an unconditional cash transfer - and the decision to migrate in Lesotho. Migration is high on the agenda, both in developing but more so in developed countries. At the same time, UCTs have become a key element of social protection initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) but studies of their overall effectiveness and impact on household behaviour, with the exception of Davis and colleagues (2016), are still lagging behind. The lack of empirical knowledge of what exactly determines migration behaviour at the microlevel often hampers the desired results of these development interventions: so far, results are inconclusive in the case of Conditional Cash Transfers; for UCTs results are largely missing. This study utilizes household survey data from a Randomised Control Trial for the evaluation of the CGP to explore the impact the grant has on migration behaviour.

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 Presented in Session 2. Children & Youth