The Psychology of Poverty: A Replication Based on Zimbabwe's Harmonised Social Cash Transfer Programme

Marwa Ibrahim, Yunwei Chen, Audrey Pereira, Takondwa Musa, Dharini Bathia and Sudhanshu Handa

Journal of African Economies, 2024, vol. 33, issue 3, 225-239

Abstract: We perform a scientific replication of a recent paper in this journal that reports evidence from Malawi that an unconditional cash transfer programme affects psychological states, such as life satisfaction and subjective well-being, as well as economic decisions involving intertemporal choice. Using data from Zimbabwe, we find similar results. Together, these two studies are the first from outside a laboratory setting that support the idea that poverty can have psychological effects that in turn influence intertemporal choice in a way that perpetuates poverty. These results, if found to hold in diverse settings, open up the policy space for a broader range of interventions that could reduce the number of people living in poverty. As this is a relatively new idea in economics with important policy implications, replicating these results in other settings is important before they can be widely generalised.

Keywords: cash transfers; psychology of poverty; subjective well-being; Zimbabwe; JEL classification: A10; A12; I39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejad013 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:33:y:2024:i:3:p:225-239.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Economies is currently edited by Francis Teal

More articles in Journal of African Economies from Centre for the Study of African Economies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().