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Unconditional cash transfers

Intervention ID: int_cash
Evidence strength: strong
Causes: cause_cash_transfers

Mechanism

Transfer cash to people in poverty.

Organizations in this catalog

• org_givedirectly

Citations (public evaluator pages)

• https://www.happierlivesinstitute.org/charities/

Evidence notes

HLI uses GiveDirectly cash as WELLBY benchmark (~7.55 WELLBYs/$1000 cited on HLI charities page comparison table context).

Key uncertainties

• Cash is a less tailored intervention than therapy/nutrition for specific populations (HLI charities FAQ).
• Benchmark figures depend on HLI’s cash CEA assumptions and overhead treatment (HLI charities methodology FAQ).

Fungibility notes

Unconditional cash transfers are typically additional to recipients; HLI treats cash as scalable default benchmark rather than modeling displacement.

Cost-effectiveness notes (do not treat as verified without citation_urls)

HLI benchmark ~7.55 WELLBYs/$1000 for GiveDirectly.

Agents must look up data/claims_index.json and cite citation_urls before stating numbers.

Provenance

See docs/evaluation-provenance.md and data/graph/evaluations_graph.json.

last_reviewed: 2026-10-01