Aswesuma, the new cash transfer programme, targets vulnerable communities 10% better than its predecessor, but because recipients consume 68% less fruit and leafy vegetables than is considered healthy, pairing that cash with nutrition education is far more likely to reduce poverty.
On November 27th, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) released its findings from a national survey conducted, designed to assess how Sri Lanka addresses poverty and whether cash-transfer schemes like Aswesuma are effectively targeting the most vulnerable and helping alleviate poverty.
Reflecting on the findings, Dr Derek Headey from the IFPRI noted that “simply handing out cash does little to improve diets or nutrition; with out proper nutrition education, most of the extra money still goes towards an unbalanced diet, with little spent on fruit and vegetables”— a reality future policymakers will need to address.
“Simply handing out cash does little to improve diets or nutrition; without proper nutrition education, most of the extra money still goes towards an unbalanced diet, with little spent on fruit and vegetables”
Calculations based on the provided data show that Aswesuma recipients consume 39% less of the healthy foods they should be eating. This includes fruits, vegetables, lentils, milk products, nuts, seeds, oil, meat, fish, and eggs.
Among poor people who do not get Aswesuma, this gap is even bigger: they eat 63% less than they should. Aswesuma helps to relieve the issue, but it does not fully solve the problem. Giving cash alone is not enough, because people also need guidance and education on what foods to eat for a healthy diet.
Although where the money goes is the most pressing issue, how much money is transferred is another concern. In the poorest bracket, Aswesuma cash transfers only accounted for 19% of total spending. In the second poorest bracket of house holds, only 10% of spending was accounted for by the cash transfer.
Better Coverage, but not Perfect
Aswesuma has expanded the reach of social protection. According to the survey, overall programme coverage has risen from 19% in 2016 under the old programme, Samurdhi, to 29% today. This is a 55% improvement.
48% of households in the poorest bracket are now covered by Aswesuma, compared to 37% under the old programme. Coverage in the second-poorest bracket has similarly increased, from 25% to 35%.
However, there is still a long way to go. As Dr Vivien Hülsen, from the University of Göttingen, put it, “More than half of poor or food insecure households are not covered by Aswesuma”.
When considering only food shortages, Aswesuma covers 42% of households. When adjusted for education, health, and living standards, 44% are covered. When adjusted for income, 47% are covered. For each of these groups, over half are not covered by the programme, indicating that severe gaps still exist.
Who Bears the Deepest Burden
Estate households record the deepest deprivation.
Dr Headey stated, “The estate sector suffers multiple types of poverty and deprivation, in addition to just having low incomes or expenditures.”
Poverty in the sector, measured by income, is at 34.8% and when further analysed to include components such as education, health, and living standards, the figure rises to 62.8%. 43.2% of estate households report moderate food shortages, and 11.4%, severe food shortages.
As a result, this sector receives the largest share of social assistance, with 52% of all Aswesuma payments going to estate households. 29% goes to rural communities and 22% to urban ones.
The Change from Samurdhi
Aswesuma started in late 2022. Officials discussing the survey noted that many people thought it replaced Samurdhi, the old government support programme for poor families. But Aswesuma and Samurdhi are actually quite different in how they work and what they try to do.
As Upul Brahmanage put it, at the survey launch, “The Samurdhi programme was actually a people-empowerment programme aimed at reducing poverty, whereas Aswesuma is defined as a short-term cash transfer programme to help households manage their day-to-day expenses for a limited period; it is not an empowerment programme, and therefore it is a completely different type of intervention.”
To sustainably reduce poverty in the long term and help people build better lives, the programme needs to see cash transfers as one limited part of a larger solution.