Humanitarian Cash Transfers: Cost, value for money and economic impact

The question of how much it costs to assist a person with humanitarian aid is a simple question that is surprisingly difficult to answer, even when looking at a single organisation’s humanitarian response. It is challenging to get the ‘full cost’ of humanitarian assistance – meaning all of the costs of purchased (or donated) relief commodities, transport, staff salaries and other expenses.

This background note provides an overview of the cost, efficency of different of cash transfers,their comparative effectiveness in meeting defined objectives and the impact on local economies and markets.

This publication is an output of the following project: High level panel on humanitarian cash transfers.