Better Together? The Impact of Cash Transfers and Couples' Financial Planning on Household Dynamics and Economic Outcomes

Sarika Gupta, Jessica Leight, Daniel W. Maggio and Simone Schaner

No 35478, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Households' most consequential economic decisions are usually made jointly, yet behavioral interventions are typically targeted to individuals and optimized to overcome intra-personal constraints. We use a randomized controlled trial to study whether behavioral interventions targeted to couples can overcome interpersonal constraints related to intra-household decision-making. In rural Liberia, we layer a facilitated joint financial planning exercise atop a large unconditional cash transfer, assessing effects relative to cash only and a pure control. Relative to cash only, adding planning increases the amount of the transfer spent on productive investment and consequently improves economic outcomes by 0.16 standard deviation units. However, for households with the highest ex-ante conflict risk, these gains come at the cost of additional intimate partner violence.

JEL-codes: D13 I30 J12 J16 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
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