national safety net programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania. Beyond these major contributions, the approach also allows for a more direct comparison of outcomes across programs, shining a light in the substantial heterogeneity in program impacts, even within just Africa. This is brought to the forefront in the discussion and reflections made on what might drive this variation in program impacts. Possible explanations include program design and implementation details. At the same time the discussion is enriched by the with evidence form other regions, ensuring that our Africa‐specific findings are compared with international benchmarks.<sup>9</sup> While unique in its focus on Africa and coverage of multiple program impacts, our meta‐analysis encountered a few challenges and limitations. First, the meta‐analysis requires having multiple estimates of an outcome across different programs. Several well‐known results in the impact evaluation literature are omitted from the meta‐analysis because of this requirement. For example, there are important results on HIV/AIDS interventions in Malawi that are omitted because there are no other evaluations in Africa testing the same outcomes. Relatedly, there are still some outcomes for which there exists no impact evaluation to assess, usually on outcomes that are inherently difficult to measure, such as incidence of gender‐based violence, social cohesion and political economy outcomes like trust in government and willingness to accept reforms. Second, the meta‐analysis requires that study estimates be comparable enough to aggregate. Specifically, the meta‐analysis requires consistency in how outcome variables are defined across estimates. It is not appropriate to combine estimates that test fundamentally different outcomes. For example, for food consumption the meta‐analysis focuses on food expenditures and omits estimates of food security indices (which tend to be constructed differently across studies). Third, many outcomes are based on early phases of programs, reflecting an inherent challenge in applying rigorous and comparable impact evaluations as programs go to scale. This challenge is highlighted, for example, in the context of Ethiopia’s PSNP in the later discussion.

# **3. Results**

# **_3.1 Equity_**

In examining equity, the meta‐analysis focuses primarily on consumption outcomes for individuals or households receiving assistance from safety nets. Total consumption expenditure is one of the main transmission channels of a safety net intervention as most of resources transferred to poor households are expected to be used to increase the quantity and variety of goods and services purchased for basic household needs. Food consumption is also included as it is a useful measure of wellbeing because it often constitutes the largest expenditure category for households, especially for poorer households. Measures of redistribution have not been included in the meta‐analysis given their absence from impact evaluations that tend to focus on impacts among direct beneficiaries. However, spillover effects of safety nets on

> 9 For this we use Bastagli et al, 2016; Baird et al, 2013; Hagen‐Zanker et al, 2011; Kabeer et al, 2012; Saavedra and Garcia, 2012 and IEG, 2011 and IEG, 2014, among others.

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