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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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Elodie Becquey

Elodie Becquey is a Senior Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit, based in IFPRI’s West and Central Africa office in Senegal. She has over 15 years of research experience in diet, nutrition, and food security in Africa, including countries such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania.

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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TOPIC

Social Protection

Social protection aims to reduce poverty, increase opportunity, and strengthen individuals’ and households’ resilience to shocks. Social protection includes social assistance (such as cash transfers, public works, or school feeding), social insurance (such as old age pension, health insurance, and crop insurance), social care (such as family support services), and labor and economic inclusion (such as job search programs or economic inclusion programs). Social protection targets multiple risks (poverty, health, employment, natural disaster) at various stages of the life cycle (childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age).

IFPRI conducts rigorous impact evaluations on a variety of social protection programs, including unconditional and conditional cash transfer programs; emergency assistance in the form of cash and/or food; school feeding programs; maternal and child health and nutrition programs; public works programs; and insurance programs. These impact evaluations use state-of-the-art methodologies to evaluate the impacts of these policies and identify the most cost-effective designs for social protection programs.

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Evaluations in social protection have assessed effects on poverty and food security as well as a wide range of other outcomes, including maternal and child health and nutrition, women’s empowerment, intimate partner violence, financial inclusion, labor, schooling, and mental health. Recently, IFPRI has focused on assessing how social protection can protect the well-being of individuals and households in LMICs against negative impacts of climate change and facilitate their adaptation to a changing climate. IFPRI had conducted impact evaluations of social protection programs and related research in Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Malawi, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Turkey. It has also pointed to the important role these programs can play in crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, and regional exposure to natural disasters.

IFPRI’s research on this topic is closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG1, SDG2, and SDG16, and the CGIAR Impact Areas on Nutrition, Health, and Food Security; Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods, and Jobs; and Gender Equality, Youth, and Social Inclusion.

social_protection

topics

Publications

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Journal Article

Armed conflict, community-based cash transfers, and social cohesion: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Ethiopia

2026Nigus, Halefom Yigzaw; Abay, Kibrom A.; Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.
Details

Armed conflict, community-based cash transfers, and social cohesion: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Ethiopia

Year published

2026

Authors

Nigus, Halefom Yigzaw; Abay, Kibrom A.; Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.

Citation

Nigus, Halefom Yigzaw; Abay, Kibrom A.; and Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr. 2026. Armed conflict, community-based cash transfers, and social cohesion: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Ethiopia. World Development 199(March 2026): 107249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107249

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Eastern Africa; Conflicts; Social Protection; Cash Transfers; Civil Conflict

Language

English

Access/Licence

Limited Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107249 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Journal Article

Understanding social safety nets and intra-household food allocation: Experimental evidence from Bangladesh

2026Coleman, Fiona M.; Ahmed, Akhter; Roy, Shalini; Hoddinott, John F.
Details

Understanding social safety nets and intra-household food allocation: Experimental evidence from Bangladesh

Evidence shows that social protection can improve diets, but little is known about how impacts vary within households, the extent to which the modality of the transfer affects how it is distributed across all household members, whether adding training on the importance of nutrition and diets alters the way transfer resources are allocated within the household, relative to a transfer alone, and if differences in allocations are shaped by differences in livelihood opportunities. We use individual food intake data from two randomized control trials fielded in rural Bangladesh to address these questions. Our results overwhelmingly demonstrate that food gains are distributed equally, regardless of the type of transfers households received (cash, food, or combination), inclusion of nutrition training, regional context, or specific dietary outcome measured. These patterns of findings hold when we consider several extensions: (1) analyzing more aggregated demographic groups; (2) considering alternative measures of diet; (3) analyzing shares rather than levels; (4) considering impacts relative to deprivation at baseline; (5) analyzing impacts on non-food outcomes that can be assigned demographically; (6) re-estimating impacts using alternate samples and alternate estimation models. Where the few significant differences are found, they are often small in magnitude and in favor of children.

Year published

2026

Authors

Coleman, Fiona M.; Ahmed, Akhter; Roy, Shalini; Hoddinott, John F.

Citation

Coleman, Fiona M.; Ahmed, Akhter U.; Roy, Shalini; and Hoddinott, John. 2025. Understanding social safety nets and intra-household food allocation: Experimental evidence from Bangladesh. Journal of Development Economics 178(January 2026): 103585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103585

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Social Safety Nets; Resource Allocation; Gender Equity; Cash Transfers; Diet; Gender; Social Protection

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103585 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Book Chapter

Social safety nets for a nutrition-sensitive food system in South Asia: Lessons from India

2025Rahman, Andaleeb
Details

Social safety nets for a nutrition-sensitive food system in South Asia: Lessons from India

Year published

2025

Authors

Rahman, Andaleeb

Citation

Rahman, Andaleeb. 2025. Social safety nets for a nutrition-sensitive food system in South Asia: Lessons from India. In The Agrifood System in South Asia: Pathways to Sustainable Healthy Diets, eds. Samuel Scott, Avinash Kishore, and Derek Headey. Chapter 10, pp. 87-99. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/178088

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Social Safety Nets; Food Systems; Social Protection; Welfare; Digital Technology

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Book Chapter

Blogs

All in together? How communities contribute to school meals programs
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 24, 2025

All in together? How communities contribute to school meals programs

By James Allen IV, Naureen Karachiwalla, and Deboleena Rakshit

The dynamics of cooperation.

IFPRI and causal impact evaluation: Evidence for real-life policies
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 25, 2025

IFPRI and causal impact evaluation: Evidence for real-life policies

By Alan de Brauw

A new report outlines diverse applications.

Conference: Sudan’s two years of crisis—impact and pathways to recovery and resilience
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 29, 2025

Conference: Sudan’s two years of crisis—impact and pathways to recovery and resilience

By Tarig Alhaj Rakhy, Shima Mohamed, Khalid Siddig, Hala Abushama, Oliver Kiptoo Kirui, and Paul Dorosh

Insights from recent research and organizations on the ground.

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Events

Increasing effectiveness of school meals in humanitarian settings: Situation & Context Analysis
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

January 14, 2026, 10:00 – 11:00 am

Increasing effectiveness of school meals in humanitarian settings: Situation & Context Analysis

In 2024, more than 473 million children — nearly one in six worldwide — lived in areas affected by conflict, exposing them to heightened risks of disrupted education, malnutrition, and loss of essential services. According to data from the Global Survey of School Meal Programs , 17% of programs globally were impacted by conflict in […]

Informing Crisis Response in Sudan
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

October 22, 2025, 3:00 – 4:30 pm

Informing Crisis Response in Sudan

The recent resurgence of armed conflicts in Africa is increasing the need and urgency for investments in shock-responsive humanitarian and social assistance programs. Armed conflicts both increase the need for aid and greatly complicate delivery of humanitarian services to vulnerable populations. In addition, humanitarian organizations are facing an increasing funding gap because of dwindling donor […]

From Relief to Resilience in Somalia: Harnessing Research to Inform Social Protection Policy and Practice
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

June 16, 2025, 3:30 – 5:00 pm

From Relief to Resilience in Somalia: Harnessing Research to Inform Social Protection Policy and Practice

Policymakers and program implementers in Somalia are increasingly recognizing the importance of complementing short-term support in the form of cash or in-kind transfers with interventions targeting longer-term development goals and poverty exit, a goal that cuts across both more traditional social protection systems and programming targeting internally displaced people. This webinar will bring together representatives […]

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News

May 12, 2025 | In the News

Fix social protection flaws instead of expanding outlay (The Daily Star)

Bangladesh must urgently redirect resources within its fragmented social protection system and scale up a handful of proven programs that directly benefit the poorest, says IFPRI’s Akhter Ahmed.

February 04, 2025 | Press Release

Solving global hunger: New report highlights school meal programs as drivers of change

School meal programs don’t just ensure children go to school and stay fed — they are a powerful force for change in communities and food systems worldwide. According to the results of the latest Global Survey of School Meal Programs© conducted by Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF), school meal programs can increase demand for nutritious […]

October 04, 2023 | In the News

In Middle East, poor miss out as ‘faulty’ algorithms target aid (Reuters) 

“Poverty assessment methods powered by algorithms are supposed to make payments fairer, but activists and researchers say such tools often wrongly exclude people,” writes Reuters in a story on new tools to benefit social protection.  Sikandra Kurdi, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which was hired by the World Bank to […]

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Our experts

Daniel Gilligan

Daniel Gilligan

Director, Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI), Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Deanna Olney

Deanna Olney

Director, Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH), Nutrition,
Diets, and Health

Thomas Assefa

Thomas Assefa

Associate Research Fellow, Innovation
Policy and Scaling

Guush Berhane

Guush Berhane

Senior Research Fellow, Innovation
Policy and Scaling

Jordan Kyle

Jordan Kyle

Research Fellow, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Mariam Dawoud

Mariam Dawoud

Program Manager, Development
Strategies and Governance

Razin Kabir

Razin Kabir

Senior Program Manager, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Cynthia Kazembe

Cynthia Kazembe

Communications Manager, Development
Strategies and Governance