CMED will evaluate the Scaling Transfers to End Poverty (STEP) programme run by the non-government organisation Give Directly and the governments of Malawi and Rwanda.
STEP will give large, almost universal cash transfers amounting to about one year of income at scale to people living in extreme poverty. Transfers are unconditional, putting the dignity of recipients first: they know best what they need. STEP will be the largest cash transfer experiment to date by at least two orders of magnitude, with over 10 million recipients, and 5 billion pounds or 25% of GDP of both countries over the next 10 years.
CMED will support STEP in designing and implementing a rigorous evaluation of the programme, developing the methodological tools to combine experimentation at-scale and structural economic modelling, and building a robust research-to-implementation pipeline where research findings can improve the programme in real time.
