Cash transfers are direct payments, typically by governments or nonprofits, made to eligible groups of people.

Three main types of cash transfer programs have been studied: conditional cash transfers (CCTs), unconditional cash transfers (UCTs), and business grant programs.

GiveWell considers cash transfers to have the strongest track record of any non-health intervention, and estimates cash transfer programs to be in the same range of cost-effectiveness as their other priority programs.^[1] As they acknowledge, this assessment is highly sensitive to certain empirical and moral assumptions, particularly concerning the investment returns to cash transfers and the relative value of averting child mortality vis-à-vis improving adult income.