This policy brief emphasises that:

• evidence shows that large-scale, well-designed social-transfer programmes can support micro-level growth processes;
• social transfers enable investment in human capital and productive assets, laying the foundations for future growth;
• social transfers can improve the efficiency of household resource allocation by alleviating vulnerability and by targeting individual household members;
• the growth effect of social transfer programmes is largely determined by programme design: transfers should be regular and reliable, appropriately channelled and complemented by asset-accumulation and asset-protection interventions.