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This book provides a historical overview of the 2,500-year history of cash transfers to better understand the roots of contemporary debates on whether and how such assistance should be provided.
List of contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Boxes
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Disclaimer
- 1: The Gist of the Journey
- 2: Poor Narratives: The Framing of Poverty and Its Design Implications
- 3: Accompanying Economic Transformation
- 4: Building State Capabilities
- 5: Social and Political Stability
- 6: Reform Trajectories
- 7: Where Do We Go from Here?
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Ugo Gentilini is Lead Economist at the World Bank. With over two decades of professional experience in social protection research and practice, Gentilini has published extensively on various issues related to social assistance. His work includes Cash Transfers in Pandemic Times (World Bank, 2022), Exploring Universal Basic Income, with Margaret Grosh, Jamele Rigolini, and Ruslan Yemtsov (World Bank, 2020), and The 1.5 Billion People Question, with Harold Alderman and Ruslan Yemtsov (World Bank, 2017).
Summary
This book provides a historical overview of the 2,500-year history of cash transfers to better understand the roots of contemporary debates on whether and how such assistance should be provided.
Additional text
This book is a fascinating account of the history of cash transfers for the poor. We tend to think of cash transfers as a recent invention, but Ugo Gentilini shows us that this kind of social assistance has roots that go back centuries, even as far as classical Athens! The book takes us on a tour of the history of these programs around the world, and shows that many challenges governments confront today have been confronted time and again throughout the history of human civilization.
