impacts on consumption indicating that even this first‐order outcome is not obtained, at least in the impact evaluations, for several programs.

Our review notes the relevance of food security measures to capture household welfare and equity improvements. Food security objectives are a central part of safety net program design. Indeed, many programs – especially where the transfer unit is in‐kind – opt to track food security either as a complement or in place of consumption measures e.g. Kenya CSG, Burkina Faso SC/THR, Niger NSNP, Uganda FUU, TASO and SF/THR and over time Ethiopia’s PSNP and SCTPP. While the variety and structure of food security measures limit comparability within our meta‐analysis, the food security findings are important highlights. In some cases, evaluations highlight food security increases (Ethiopia PSNP and SCTPP, Niger NSNP, and Uganda FUU and TASO<sup>23</sup> ), but no total consumption impacts. Generally, these food security measures are captured through increased dietary diversity, higher food scores, improved anthropometric measures among children and lower self‐reports of periods of food insecurity within the household. Most notably, Ethiopia provides a striking example on the long‐term evolution of food security outcomes under the PSNP: between 2006 and 2014, there has been a fall in the mean food gap (number of months a household reports food shortages) by 1.87 months (Berhane et al, 2015). The significance of these results is reflected in Ethiopia’s most recent poverty assessment, which concluded that the immediate direct effect of transfers provided to rural households through PSNP<sup>24</sup> has reduced the national poverty rate by 2 percentage points in 2011 (World Bank, 2015).

The impact of safety nets on total consumption, food consumption and food security is also captured in the wider international literature (Bastagli et al 2016, Davis et al 2016). Bastagli et al (2016) look at 31 global studies reporting impacts on household food expenditure and find 25 with at least one statistically significant effect, with 23 being a positive increase. The remainder show a decrease owing to a reduction in labor supply and possible prioritization of savings over consumption. They also find variability in the impacts of programs, which ranges from increases of 4.9% for Nicaragua’s Attention a Crisis (Macours et al, 2012) to 26% for Nicaragua’s Red de Protection Social (Maluccio, 2005), both relative to beneficiaries’ baseline food consumption. However, this review does not standardize effect sizes relative to baseline consumption levels or transfer sizes, unless already reported in individual studies, which may mean that the heterogeneity in results is not fully captured. For example, these percentage changes may shadow important differences in the absolute and relative magnitude of transfers to beneficiaries and beneficiaries’ initial levels of poverty, which we find in our meta‐analysis does play a part program impacts. Corroborating findings on the positive effects on consumption come mainly from Latin America and are included in the reviews of Hagen‐Zanker et al (2011), Yoong et al (2012) and Kabeer et al (2012).

A range of evaluations under the African Protection to Production Project find sizeable income effects on non‐beneficiaries, as well as direct program beneficiaries (Davis et al 2016).<sup>25</sup> Using a combination of

> 23 Berhane et al 2011 (Ethiopia PSNP), Berhane et al 2015 (Ethiopia SCTPP), Premand and Del Ninno 2016 (Niger NSNP), Gilligan and Roy 2016 (Uganda FUU), Rawat et al 2014 (Uganda TASO/WFP).

> 24 PSNP alone contributed to 1.6 percentage points reduction in poverty (lifting about 1.4 million people out of poverty) based on a calculation using 1.25 2011 USD PPP as poverty line.

> 25 See work also background papers by collaborators at the FAO and UCDavis, including: Ed Taylor, Justin Kagin, Mateusz Filipski, Karen Thome, Ben Davis, Federica Alvani.

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