The effects of poverty reduction intervention on health outcomes among women and young children in low- and middle-income countries

ABSTRACT Poverty long has been recognized as an important social determinant of health. Despite many years of progress, in 2018 nearly 10% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty — below $1.90 per day. The Covid-19 pandemic has further increased poverty, leading to a 12% increase in extreme poverty in 2020, with ongoing

increases in low-income countries in 2021. Large-scale, government-led cash transfer programs that provide money to individuals or households (with or without conditions) have been a vital part of poverty reduction strategies in many countries during the past two decades. Unlike multi-country evaluations of major health aid

programs like PEPFAR, the vast majority of studies of cash transfer programs have focused on individual countries and impacts on beneficiaries in those countries, generally using datasets that are not large enough to precisely estimate effects on mortality rates and many other important health outcomes. In recent work, we used

data from 37 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and numerous Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) surveys to generate longitudinal mortality datasets for about 7 million adults and children. Using a difference-in- differences approach, we found that government-led cash transfer programs resulted in large and statistically

significant reductions in mortality among adult females (adjusted risk ratio 0.80) and children