The Impact of Cash Transfers on Women's Empowerment: The Case of the Tanzania Social Action Fund

Social cash transfer (CT) programs are widely promoted around the world as effective instruments for poverty reduction. Unfortunately, they are rarely examined in a rigorous fashion to determine their purported impact. It is in this context that a mixed method was employed in the present study on a panel data set collected between 2015 and 2017 to examine the impact of the Tanzania Social Action Fund’s (TASAF) CT program on women’s empowerment. Results from a quasi‐experimental design show that TASAF targets poor households and does have an impact within its own sphere. However, the said impact does not spill over outside TASAF domain. These results are corroborated by qualitative data findings used in the study. We thus recommend that TASAF be accompanied by similar programs for a bigger and sustainable impact on women’s empowerment to be realized. Moreover, the study recommends that initiatives such as that of TASAF should go hand‐in‐hand with religious, legal, and cultural reforms.