What difference do cash transfers make? Understanding impacts and mechanisms from cash transfer recipients and communities in Malawi and Lesotho.

Cash transfers are a common poverty alleviation intervention, yet qualitative reports of recipients’ lived experiences are limited. Without these perspectives, policy frameworks risk reducing beneficiaries to passive inputs in programmatic equations. This means potentially overlooking the social meanings, moral negotiations, and relational dynamics through which transfers are actually received, used, perceived, and redistributed. To address this gap, we analyzed 74 in-depth interviews with cash transfer recipients and their household members in rural Malawi and Lesotho. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we created four themes: 1) “With my poverty it can’t work”: Enough to survive, not enough to change, 2) “I can’t be eating in my house while my children are hungry next door”: Grandmothers and the obligation to share, 3) “I am already worried as to what I will be doing”: Psychological relief and stress intertwine, 4) “Sky-falling” and “satanic” money: Notions of deservingness produce stigma and jealousy. Recipients consistently noted improvement in food security, while effects on mental health and social relationships were more mixed. We argue that recipient-centered reports complement and strengthen quantitative evidence about the impacts and mechanisms of cash transfers. We discuss specific policy recommendations, such as larger and more predictable payments, better communication, and sensitive disbursement options, gender-sensitive support, and more active monitoring of psychosocial and community effects in order to mitigate potential negative impacts. Finally, we argue there is a need for a more ambitious focus on development as the key path to poverty eradication.