Learning About Labour Impacts of Cash Transfers in Zambia

Over the past decade, several African governments have launched cash transfer (CT) programmes as part of social protection systems, with the aim of reducing poverty and hunger. Such programmes can also have significant impacts on rural livelihoods by inducing investments in productive activities and changing household labour allocation. In this paper, we look beyond the protective function of CTs and provide evidence on their impacts on labour supply. We use data from the second wave of the impact evaluation of the Zambia Child Grant model of the Social Cash Transfer programme. We focus on the response of households’ labour supply in terms of off-farm paid labour and own-farm labour. We find that CTs cause a shift from agricultural wage labour to own-farm labour and that overall have no work disincentives on-farm households.