Impact of productive social safety net on households’ vulnerability to food insecurity in Tanzania

The effectiveness of social safety nets (SSNs) as anti-poverty policy instruments is increasingly attracting attention in development discourse. Previous studies on their impacts have mainly considered outcomes other than vulnerability, leaving a gap in the knowledge and literature. We use the Tanzanian 2017–18 Household Budget Survey dataset, comprising 9,463 households, to evaluate the impact of the productive social safety net (PSSN) program on households' vulnerability to food insecurity (VFI). The VFI is evaluated using the vulnerability as expected poverty (VEP) approach, whereas the impact is estimated using the Instrumental Variable (IV) approach. We found evidence consistent with the significant impact of PSSN on the VFI. Curiously, the estimated impacts are greater for households enrolled in conditional cash transfer (CCT) and public works (PW) combined, implying that a package of CCT and PW is likely to have a greater impact on vulnerability reduction space. Overall, the results provide evidence in support of policies that encourage wider expansion of SSNs as a policy instrument for assisting extremely poor households in moving out of the chronically poor and the risk of falling or remaining food insecure in the future.