Navigating Ethical Challenges in Cash Transfer and Basic Income Pilots

In recent years, cash has risen as a tool of social, development and humanitarian policy. So successful have cash transfers (CTs) been that many call for them to form the cornerstone of whole social protection systems, in the form of a Basic Income (BI). Proponents of CTs and BI rely on pilots to generate evidence around feasibility and effectiveness, and to win political support. Yet, to date, there has been limited discussion and few publications addressing how such pilots can respect ethical standards. This paper responds to this lack. It begins by reviewing recent literature on the ethics of cash piloting. It then draws on the author's empirical experience designing and managing two large-scale pilots in South Asia. The review identifies five ethical challenges for would-be piloters, around informed consent, randomisation, avoiding harm, and navigating power inequalities between researchers and participants and within research teams. It explains these and what the literature says may be done to navigate them, before the empirical contribution details how the author and his colleagues sought to do so, with which successes and failures, in the two case studies in question. The paper concludes with critical reflections on the development of best practice.