Are palliative cash transfers effective to counteract the effects of stay-at-home orders? evidence from Peru

Several governments in LAC are increasingly imposing mandatory quarantines for all citizens to contain the expansion of the Covid-19 pandemic. These measures have proved to be the most effective to flatten the curve, but their downside are the economic and unequal consequences they trigger, particularly in a region with a large informal sector. We take advantage of a large-scale public program that is delivering cash transfers to almost 7 million poor and vulnerable households in Peru and measure the short and medium run effects of cash grants on consumption, mobility, health, and intrahousehold dynamics. Since eligibility was determined either by an index of living conditions or by household income in the informal activity, we rely on a regression discontinuity design to estimate local effects.