Children on the move: the tale of a surprising spillover in humanitarian cash transfers to refugees
Imagine the following scenario: you have a population consisting of two groups, who are, on average, equally poor at baseline. You randomly pick one group to receive sizeable cash transfers: what would happen to inequality within this population? It should increase, mainly because you increased between-group inequality, which was negligible at the start (assume away, if you wish, within-group inequality for now). At the same time, poverty should decline in the recipient group relative to the other group.
Now, what if I told you that there was such a cash transfer program and six months after the monthly transfers started being disbursed to the recipients, overall inequality in the entire population (i.e. treatment and control combined) declined substantially. Not only that, but inequality within each group declined, while poverty fell by approximately 50% after one year (again, overa