Flawed methods lead to dangerous conclusions on SRD lifeline

This article critiques two 2026 academic papers that argue that the Covid-19 SRD grant led to reductions in household income and expenditure and food security. We show that a failure to understand the design of the grant led to flawed methods and incorrect interpretation of results. The authors conclude that cash transfer programmes can have negative “unintended consequences”, when in fact their results show that the grant is overwhelmingly received by income-insecure households, but that its value is too low to adequately alleviate food insecurity.