Kate Orkin has co-authored a chapter on the psychological impact of cash transfers in The Handbook of Social Protection: Evidence and New Directions for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (MIT Press). 

The chapter focuses on cash transfers as a means for support for low-income people (as opposed to forms of support like food parcels), and examines what psychological effects they have on recipients and how this may influence people to advance their own economic position.

Kate and co-author Matthew Ridley review the evidence on first, how cash transfers affect individuals’ life satisfaction, emotions, and­ mental health; and second, whether cash transfers influence people psychologically in ways that mean they further improve their own economic position – by pursuing work or seizing investment opportunities, for example.