Egypt has been providing cash to poor households through its first conditional cash transfer program, Takaful and Karama, a social protection program run by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS), since March 2015. Takaful ("Solidarity") supports poor families with children under 18, while Karama ("Dignity") supports the elderly poor and people living with disabilities. The cash transfer program has enrolled 2.25 million families across all of Egypt's governorates. The amount of the Takaful

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... sh transfer provided to households depends on the number of children and their school level. The Karama program provides a set amount per individual. In order to reach the poorest households, participants are selected using a proxy means test. In the Takaful program, 89 percent of recipients are women, while only 11 percent are men. Beginning in 2018, Takaful will also begin implementing conditionalities, requiring households in the program to ensure their children attend school and participate in health screenings, added to antenatal care for pregnant women and post-natal care. The Takaful and Karama program was evaluated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) using both quantitative statistical methods (simple questions asked to many households during a survey) and qualitative methods (more in-depth questions asked to fewer households in longer interviews) (Box 1). The evaluation was designed to measure and explain the impacts of the cash transfers on household welfare, and to examine whether the program's criteria for household selection were effective in identifying poor households. This brief, which focuses on the Takaful component of the program, summarizes the main findings from the evaluation and key recommendations. Beneficiaries report that program implementation works well. Sixty-eight percent of the program beneficiaries of Takaful and Karama are very satisfied with the program, and 89 percent are either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied (Figure 1). Box 1 Evaluation methodology For the quantitative evaluation, a statistical method called regression discontinuity (RD) was used. The quantitative study surveyed a random sample of 6,541 households in 22 governorates from among all households that registered for Takaful and Karama with proxy-means-test scores near the threshold for inclusion. An additional 1,692 households were surveyed from a separate nationally representative sample for households with children to measure how well the program reached the poor. The qualitative component helps to explain and provide context for the quantitative findings. IFPRI's team conducted 61 semi-structured interviews, facilitated focus groups with 76 individuals, and held 8 community profile interviews in 6 different governorates. This brief focuses on findings describing additional effects of Takaful on poor households, achieved through a comparison between ultra-poor households-which were not included in the quantitative evaluation-and households near the threshold.* The evaluation also looked at Takaful's impact on intrahousehold decision making. Evaluation of the Karama program was complicated by the smaller sample size and a change made in the threshold for inclusion during the study period, which prevented measurement of the impacts of Karama transfers. More information can be found in the full report.