Incorporating cash-based interventions into food assistance programs in humanitarian settings

Receipt of humanitarian cash transfers, household food insecurity and the subjective wellbeing of Syrian refugee youth in Jordan

OBJECTIVE

Humanitarian aid, including food aid, has increasingly shifted towards the provision of cash assistance over in-kind benefits. This paper examines whether food security mediates the relationship between receipt of humanitarian cash transfers and subjective wellbeing among Syrian refugee youth in Jordan.

DESIGN

Secondary analysis of the 2020-21 Survey of Young People in Jordan, which is nationally representative of Syrian youth aged 16-30. We employ stepwise model building and structural equation models.

SETTING

Jordan.

PARTICIPANTS

Syrian refugee youth aged 16-30 (n 1572).

RESULTS

While 92 % of Syrian households with youth received cash transfers from a UN agency, 78 % of households were food insecure using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Fifty-one percent of youth suffered from poor wellbeing using the WHO-5 subjective wellbeing scale. Household food insecurity was associated with poorer youth wellbeing. Receiving larger cash transfer amounts was associated with better wellbeing among Syrian youth in unadjusted models. The relationship between receipt of cash transfers and youth wellbeing was not mediated by food security.

CONCLUSION

We do not find support for the hypothesis that food security is a mediator of the association between cash transfers and subjective wellbeing for this population.

Emergency Food Support Preference and Usage During COVID-19: A Neighborhood Study of Low-Income Black Mothers? Use of School-Based Food Distribution and P-EBT

COVID-19 disrupted families' food supply. Based on in-depth interviews with 45 Black low-income mothers of young children in an underserved Houston, Texas, neighborhood from April 2020 to June 2021, we compared two aid programs-Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer cash assistance and in-kind food distributions. We found that mothers preferred cash assistance for boosting existing food strategies, while food distributions presented new challenges for already burdened families. We argue that food assistance interventions can be more successful and equitable by integrating service user context, needs, and preferences. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(S3):S227-S230. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307458).