Applying Behavioral Science to Humanitarian Cash & Voucher Assistance for Better Outcomes for Women

How can we harness the power of behavioral science to improve outcomes for women receiving cash and voucher assistance (CVA) in humanitarian settings?  ideas42 and CARE International conducted research in three of CARE’s countries of presence—Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey—to develop a thorough understanding of the contexts in which women recipients in these settings receive, make decisions on, and use CVA to support themselves and their households.

In this guide, we aim to share behavioral insights that shed new light on the many challenges facing women when using CVA in humanitarian settings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Together, we identified that although the structural challenges in humanitarian settings can be huge—such as limited resources to support affected populations, persistent economic shocks to households, or legal and regulatory constraints to banking and formal employment—small programmatic tweaks and behavioral interventions can more effectively maximize the impact of cash and voucher programs in these settings.