A Regional Multiplier Approach to Estimating the Impact of Cash Transfers on the Market: The Case of Cash Transfers in Rural Malawi

This article analyses the impact on the local economy of an emergency cash–transfer programme in rural Malawi. The results are of interest, given the growing use of cash transfers as development aid as well as the increasing popularity of such transfers as a form of social protection across sub–Saharan Africa. It uses a form of social accounting matrix to show that there are widespread benefits for the regional economy as a whole (with multiplier estimates of 2.02 to 2.45), especially during the most ‘lean’ periods of the year, and for small farmers and small businesses in particular, as this is where poorer households' purchases are focused; education and health also benefit.     

Promoting Resilient Livelihoods through Adaptive Social Protection: Lessons from 124 programmes in South Asia

Adaptive Social Protection refers to efforts to integrate social protection (SP), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), the need for which is increasingly recognised by practitioners and academics. Relying on 124 agricultural programmes implemented in five countries in Asia, this article considers how these elements are being brought together, and explores the potential gains of these linkages. It shows that full integration is still relatively limited but that, when it occurs, it helps to shift the time horizon beyond short‐term interventions aimed at supporting peoples' coping strategies and/or graduation objectives, towards longer‐term interventions that can help promote transformation towards climate and disaster resilient livelihood options.     

Developing interests in child care outcome measurement: a central government perspective

Over the last decade, the research interest of central government in services to children and families has covered various parts of the child care system, though the focus on evaluation of outcomes has remained constant. Major research programmes encompass the outcomes of: child protection interventions, residential care and the implementation of the Children Act 1989.     

Planning participation in public decision making

By posing as specialists in forecasting the future, by arguing the “inevitability of technological progress, and by hiding behind the skirts of public officials, planners in the public sector seek to exercise power without responsibility—power to determine the shape of life for the rest of us. The author attacks this myth of the all- seeing planner and in the process seeks to demolish some of the planners' unwarranted assumptions about “the year 2000”, the future of technology, the affluent society, the age of leisure, etc.     

Partitioning Pearson's Chi-Squared Statistic for a Completely Ordered Three-Way Contingency Table

The paper presents a partition of the Pearson chi-squared statistic for triply ordered three-way contingency tables. The partition invokes orthogonal polynomials and identifies three-way association terms as well as each combination of two-way associations. This partition provides information about the structure of each variable by identifying important bivariate and trivariate associations in terms of location (linear), dispersion (quadratic) and higher order components. The significance of each term in the partition, and each association within each term can also be determined.
The paper compares the chi-squared partition with the log-linear models of Agresti (1994) for multi-way contingency tables with ordinal categories, by generalizing the model proposed by Haberman (1974).     

Commitment to Work Among Welfare‐Reliant Women

The purpose of this article is to describe the work of welfare‐reliant women and to reveal commitment to work in the experiences of 84 welfare‐reliant, rural women interviewed for this study. Understanding the domains where welfare‐reliant women exhibit commitment to work may help policy makers, trainers, and employers design and implement interventions that enhance chances of success for these women in the formal, paid workforce. Discussion focuses on the women's formal labor force participation in the past and desire for wage work in the future; barriers to labor force participation, both personal and in the rural job market; informal work and the work of care; support networks; survival strategies for making ends meet while receiving welfare; and the stigma of welfare receipt.