The Welfare Effects of Beneficiary Control over the Timing of Cash Transfers

Last registered on July 06, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The Welfare Effects of Beneficiary Control over the Timing of Cash Transfers
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014679
Initial registration date
October 30, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
November 15, 2024, 1:01 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
July 06, 2025, 2:02 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
Ghana
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Naureen Karachiwalla
Affiliation
International Food Policy Research Institute
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Francis (Haoyu) Fang
PI Affiliation
University of Washington
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Jason Kerwin
PI Affiliation
University of Washington
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Francis Annan
PI Affiliation
University of California, Berkeley
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-05-07
End date
2028-12-31
Keywords
Behavior, Finance & Microfinance, Welfare
Additional Keywords
Cash transfers, well-being, credit, insurance
JEL code(s)
D14, D15i, I31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
To exit poverty, income streams of the poor must align with their liquidity needs (e.g., large investments, consumption-smoothing, saving for shocks, and smaller expenses). Traditional cash transfer programs lack flexibility, offering only fixed payment structures. This project will measure the demand for, and the welfare impacts of, the choice of a fully flexible payment schedule (frequency, timing, and amounts) in partnership with the Government of Ghana's Livelihood Against Poverty (LEAP) Program.

First, we will randomize 800 (of 1,500) households into a control group (C) and 700 to a treatment group will receive cash transfers (T). Next, we will elicit beneficiary preferences over preferred times and amounts of cash transfers and measure respondents' willingness to accept (WTA) switching to the LEAP default timing instead (equal, bi-monthly transfers) using a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism. The BDM mechanism will determine whether a household belongs to one of two treatment groups with the following distribution programs (equal in total value): (T1) smooth, bi-monthly transfers (LEAP default) vs. (T2) fully-flexible payment schedule that provides choice over the timing of transfers. Impacts will be assessed on subjective well-being, consumption expenditures (we will use this to derive marginal utility of expenditures (MUEs) following Ligon (2020) and the treatment’s welfare effects), income, assets, savings and debt, women’s empowerment, and mental health. We will further explore whether liquidity or risk drive these impacts by stratifying treatments on village “financial health” (low, medium, high) (Innovations for Poverty Action IPA 2020).

After evaluating the main effects at endline by comparing the control vs treatment groups and the two treatments to one another (the lump-sum and fully-flexible programs), we plan to later implement a mechanism experiment to causally test whether the main effects are explained by either commitment and self-control motives or consumption self-insurance motives. All households will receive cash transfers. Households will be randomized into a control group receiving no additional programming, a group that will additionally receive an insurance product, a group that will additionally receive a a savings product, and a group that will additionally receive both insurance and savings products. The outcomes will be the same as the main experiment.

This project will thus involve three parts (each with a different pre-analysis plan to be uploaded separately):
1. Measurement and analysis of the respondent's willingness to accept LEAP's default schedule instead of the elicited preferred schedule.
2. Randomized trial with a control group and two experimental groups (fully flexible schedule and bi-monthly equal transfers) with associated analysis.
3. Randomized mechanism experiment providing a free savings or insurance product in addition to the cash transfers.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Annan, Francis et al. 2025. "The Welfare Effects of Beneficiary Control over the Timing of Cash Transfers." AEA RCT Registry. July 06. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14679-2.0
Sponsors & Partners

Sponsors

Partner

Name
Government of Ghana, Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection
Type
government
URL
https://www.mogcsp.gov.gh/
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The LEAP program is the Government of Ghana’s national cash transfer program and began in 2008. It provides transfers to the ultra-poor based on the number of eligible individuals in the household. Vulnerable household members include orphaned and vulnerable children, people with severe disability without any productive capacity, extremely poor or vulnerable households with pregnant women and mothers with infants, and members 65 years and above. Beneficiary selection begins with data from the Ghana Statistical Service for national poverty maps, followed by geographical targeting of districts who have the highest poverty rates, and finally household enumeration using a proxy-means testing questionnaire.

A household with one eligible member receives GH₵512.00, two eligible members receives GH₵608.00, three eligible members receives GH₵704.00, and four or more eligible members receives GH₵848.00. Payments are made electronically (via biometric fingerprints) bi-monthly in equal installments. To remain eligible, households must enroll school-aged children in school, enroll all members in the national health insurance scheme, and children 0-18 months must be registered with the Birth and Deaths Registry, attend required post-natal clinics and complete the Expanded Programme on Immunisation. For the main experiment, the transfers will run for one year and will either be the LEAP default bi-monthly, equal transfers or the beneficiary's preferred transfer scheduled (as determined by the BDM mechanism).

For the mechanism experiment, the same program will be used, but amounts may differ should the Government of Ghana decide. The precise savings and insurance products will be determined at a later date.
Intervention Start Date
2025-07-01
Intervention End Date
2028-07-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Marginal Utility of Expenditure (MUE), subjective well-being, willingness to accept (WTA)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
MUE - see Ligon (2020)
Subjective well-being - see Benjamin, Heffetz, Kimball, and Szembrot (2014)
Willingness to accept (WTA) - Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) method

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Consumption, assets, savings, debt, depression, stress, anxiety, self-esteem, women's empowerment, risk-aversion, ambiguity-aversion, time preferences, cognition
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Consumption - mean daily expenditures per adult equivalent unit (food and non-food consumption)
Assets - first principal component of a PCA analysis on a list of 17 assets (productive and durables)
Savings - any savings, amount of savings
Debt - any debt, amount of debt, lender
Depression - PHQ-9
Stress - Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale
Anxiety - GAD-7
Self-esteem - Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
Women's empowerment - WEMNS
Risk and ambiguity-aversion - double multiple price list
Time preferences - multiple price list
Cognition - digit span forward and backward

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
First, we will randomize 800 (of 1,500) households into a control group (C) and 700 to a treatment group will receive cash transfers (T). Next, we will elicit beneficiary preferences over preferred times and amounts of cash transfers and measure respondents' willingness to accept (WTA) switching to the LEAP default timing instead (equal, bi-monthly transfers) using a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism. The BDM mechanism will determine whether a household belongs to one of two treatment groups with the following distribution programs (equal in total value): (T1) smooth, bi-monthly transfers (LEAP default) vs. (T2) fully-flexible payment schedule that provides choice over the timing of transfers. Respondents will state their maximum WTA to switch away from their preferred schedule, and a spinning wheel will provide a random amount of money between 0-690 GHC. If the respondent's WTA is lower than the amount spun, they will receive their preferred timing schedule, otherwise, they will switch to the LEAP default schedule.

Impacts will be assessed on subjective well-being, consumption expenditures (we will use this to derive marginal utility of expenditures (MUEs) following Ligon (2020) and the treatment’s welfare effects), income, assets, savings and debt, women’s empowerment, and mental health. We will further explore whether liquidity or risk drive these impacts by stratifying treatments on village “financial health” (low, medium, high) (Innovations for Poverty Action IPA 2020).

After evaluating the main effects at endline by comparing the control vs treatment groups and the two treatments to one another (the lump-sum and fully-flexible programs), we plan to later implement a mechanism experiment to causally test whether the main effects are explained by either commitment and self-control motives or consumption self-insurance motives. All households will receive cash transfers. Households will be randomized into a control group receiving no additional programming, a group that will additionally receive an insurance product, a group that will additionally receive a a savings product, and a group that will additionally receive both insurance and savings products. The outcomes will be the same as the main experiment.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Stratified, clustered randomization conducted by Stata.
Randomization Unit
Village
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
150 villages
Sample size: planned number of observations
1,500 households
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
800 pure control households, 350 households smooth bi-monthly payments, 350 households fully flexible (timing and amount) payments
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
See power calculations PDF.
Supporting Documents and Materials

Documents

Document Name
Power Calculations
Document Type
other
Document Description
File
Power Calculations

MD5: 504d812755e7e3426db179403b42a6e0

SHA1: d63d49ef278f3c9f36ca9cf7b27fa0ddadcc9977

Uploaded At: July 06, 2025

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of California of Berkeley
IRB Approval Date
2024-01-09
IRB Approval Number
2023-12-16960
Analysis Plan

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