Costing alternative transfer modalities

Amy Margolies and John Hoddinott

No 1375, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Discussions regarding the merits of cash and food transfers by academics and implementers alike focus on their relative impacts. Much less is known about their relative costs. We apply activity-based costing methods to interventions situated in Ecuador, Niger, Uganda, and Yemen, finding that the per transfer cost of providing cash is always less than that of providing food. Given the budget for these interventions, an additional 44,769 people could have received assistance at no additional cost had cash been provided instead of food. This suggests a significant opportunity cost in terms of reduced coverage when higher-cost transfer modalities are used. Decisions to use cash or food transfers should consider both impacts and costs.

Keywords: social protection; cash transfers; food aid; Ecuador; Niger; Uganda; Yemen; Central America; Eastern Africa; Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Latin America; Middle East; Western Africa; Northern America; South America; Western Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/151286

Related works:
Journal Article: Costing alternative transfer modalities (2015)
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:fpr:ifprid:1375

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (ifpri-library@cgiar.org).