Social Cash Transfers, Generational Relations and Youth Poverty Trajectories in Rural Lesotho and Malawi

This three-year collaborative research project has generated evidence about the ways in which social cash transfer (SCT) schemes intervene in and transform the structural power relations that underlie the reproduction of poverty.

It has focused on rural youth and draws on qualitative research in two rural communities, one in Malawi, which has recently introduced social cash transfers to ultra-poor labour-constrained households, and the other in Lesotho which operates social pensions and child grants. The research also investigated the policy communities that designed and are implementing the schemes. It was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council and Department for International Development.