Using social transfers to scale up equitable acces to education and health services

Scaling up Services team, DFID Policy Division UK Department for International Development (DFID) - January 2006

"....This paper provides background analysis to support a DFID Policy Division Briefing Note on Using Social Transfers to Improve Human Development produced by the Scaling up Services team in collaboration with the Social Protection team, part of a series of briefing notes on social protection. This work complements DFID’s Practice Paper Social Transfers and Chronic Poverty (2005). It also forms one part of DFID’s Scaling up Services team’s workstream on promoting equitable access to health and education services.

Policies that promote poor people’s access to health and education services are critical to making best use of scaled up resources. Scaling up poor people’s access will require a combination of health and education system investments along with investments outside those sectors. These may include demand side approaches that promote the use of available services, as well as increasing service coverage. This paper focuses on the impact of one form of demand-side policy option - social transfers, particularly cash transfers and vouchers - on access to health and education services by the extreme poor. It also touches upon the broader contribution that social transfers make to human development outcomes....."