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households with young women and children—using a combination of geographic, self-selection, and demographic targeting. Box 5.4 describes other cases.

People living with disability or who are facing unemployment are also common categories that may deserve support. However, discerning who has a disability is not simple, nor is determining what level of support may be appropriate for individuals in these groups (see boxes 5.5 and 5.6, respectively). Beyond these short treatments and the references, this book does not cover the topics of disability assessment or labor profiling.

BOX 5.4

Using Categorical Programs in Crisis Response: Examples from Mongolia, Bolivia, and Nepal

As part of its COVID-19 response, Mongolia quintupled payments in its nearly universal child allowance. Before the pandemic, the Child Money Program (CMP) provided an allowance of Tog 20,000 (US$7) per month to children younger than 18 years. It aimed to cover about 85 percent of all children in Mongolia (particularly poorer children). As a part of its COVID-19 relief package, the government of Mongolia increased the benefit amount by five times to Tog 100,000 (US$35), which is equivalent to more than half of the poor’s per capita monthly household income. Between April 2020 and July 2021, this cost 4.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), one of the larger crisis response programs in the world. It was also the largest element of Mongolia’s overall response package, which cost 11 percent of GDP, again among the larger response packages. Data from a series of rapid phone surveys sketch a picture of the outcomes. Overall coverage was high but not universal, reaching about 65 percent of households by the time of the first survey in May 2020 and similar throughout. Coverage was mildly progressive, with 80 percent of households in the poorest quintile receiving the CMP, and declining to 47 percent of those in the highest quintile. Since pandemic-induced income shocks were widespread across the distribution, there were no statistically significant differences in the likelihood of receiving the CMP payment between households that experienced and did not experience a loss in labor income. In terms of usage of the CMP benefits, poorer beneficiaries were more likely to cash out and use the CMP benefits immediately, especially for food and household utilities, while wealthier households were

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BOX 5.4 (continued)

significantly more likely to put the transfer into a savings account for future use (Kim and Uochi 2021).

As part of its COVID-19 Crisis Response Program, Bolivia doubled the benefits of its universal social pension program, Renta Dignidad. Prior to the crisis, Renta Dignidad cost about 1.3 percent of GDP and covered about 91 percent of those ages 60+ and 28 percent of households. The payments represented about 12 percent of total income for eligible households. Starting April 1, 2020, the government doubled the transfer amount for beneficiaries who were not receiving other government pensions. The government also modified the payment mechanism somewhat. It allowed the payments to be made to authorized family members on behalf of beneficiaries, so that the elderly would not have to go to bank branches, and partnered with private banks to increase the number of locations authorized to disburse the transfers. Nonetheless, payments were still in person and only 60 percent of those who were eligible claimed their payments in April. An internet survey in April 2020 captured the situation of families shortly after lockdown orders went into effect and analyzed the effect of the program by comparing the situation of families with a person just shy of eligibility age and those just eligible (an analytic technique called regression discontinuity design). As mobility restrictions were put into effect, across all income levels, 68 percent of households experienced the closure of a family-owned business and 45 percent of households experienced a job loss. Only 52 percent of households reported having enough cash in hand to cover a week’s worth of expenses, and only 33 percent of households reported having enough food reserves to cover meals for a week. In addition, 42 percent of households modified their diets and 18 percent experienced hunger. By providing a basic income to beneficiaries, Renta Dignidad led to a 9-percentage-point decline in the probability that someone in the household went hungry. The program also reduced the probability that a respondent reported eating less healthfully and increased the probability that beneficiaries had at least a week’s worth of financial resources to cover basic needs. The positive impacts were concentrated among households that were hardest hit by the crisis. They were largest for households with low incomes prior to the pandemic and those in which someone lost their livelihood due to the lockdown policies (Bottan, Hoffmann, and Vera-Cossio 2021).

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BOX 5.4 (continued)

Nepal used its Social Security Allowances (SSA) as part of its earthquake response. On April 25 and May 12, 2015, two earthquakes struck Nepal, each followed by a series of powerful aftershocks. The earthquakes caused an estimated US$7 billion worth of damage, pushed perhaps three-quarters of a million Nepalese below the US$1.25 international poverty line, and killed 8,831 people. The government of Nepal and the United Nations Children’s Fund chose to channel the social protection response via the existing SSA program. The SSA is composed of five cash transfer schemes that use categorical and demographic targeting as the method for targeting.a In phase 1 of the earthquake response (May to December 2015), an emergency cash transfer of NPR 3,000 (approximately US$30) was made only to SSA beneficiaries already on the roster in the 19 affected districts.b Cash transfers were made to 434,690 individuals, or 93 percent of regular social protection beneficiaries in the selected districts. The speed of the response varied a bit across districts, due to the manual payment process, but most of the beneficiaries had received their payments by October 2015, five months after the first earthquake hit the country. In phase 2 (December 2015 to June 2016), the response focused on the 11 most earthquake-affected districts among the 19 that participated in phase 1.c In phase 2, there was a horizontal expansion to serve all children younger than age five years in the selected districts. All children were provided a one-time transfer of NPR 4,000 (approximately US$40). This required opening a registration process to build a roster for all children in this age group in an environment where only half of all children had registered births. The emergency cash transfer program was not envisaged as a replacement for comprehensive humanitarian action, as many other actors were involved in supporting the disaster-affected population (see Merttens, Kukrety, and Majeed 2017).

a. Cash transfers to senior citizens, single women, those with disability, endangered ethnicity, and children younger than age five in selected areas of the country. b. The 19 districts were Bhaktapur, Chitwan, Dhading, Dolakha, Gorkha, Kathmandu, Kavhrepalanchowk, Kotang, Lalitpur, Lamjung, Makawanpur, Nuwakot, Okhaldhunga, Ramechhap, Rasuwa, Sindhuli, Sindhupalchowk, Solukhumbu, and Tanahun. c. The 11 districts were Sindhupalchowk, Nuwakot, Dhading, Gorkha, Rasuwa, Kavhrepalanchowk, Dolakha, Sindhuli, Ramechhap, Makawanpur, and Okhaldhunga.