Beyond the Cash: Pakistan Study Reveals What Happens to Women After Welfare Payments End

Pakistan’s BISP study finds that women who unexpectedly lost cash transfers showed no significant decline in empowerment, well-being, household decision-making or child outcomes after one year. The findings support carefully managed welfare graduation, but warn governments to protect poorer households and link programme exits with skills, jobs, financial inclusion and continued monitoring.

Pakistan's experience with the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) is offering an important lesson for governments trying to balance social protection with limited public finances. Research by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, London School of Economics, the University of Exeter and the World Bank's South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab finds that women who unexpectedly stopped receiving BISP cash transfers did not experience a significant decline in empowerment, household decision-making or well-being one year later.

The finding is important because female-targeted cash transfers are widely used to reduce poverty while giving women greater control over household resources. Governments, however, regularly need to update beneficiary lists as household conditions change. The central policy question is whether removing beneficiaries also reverses the social gains created while they were receiving support.

When the Cash Stopped, Women's Agency Largely Survived

The researchers studied BISP beneficiaries in Layyah district in southern Punjab after Pakistan updated the Proxy Means Test used to determine programme eligibility. The revised targeting system was based on a census covering nearly 35 million households, or around 93% of Pakistani households.

The original study sample included 2,449 women, with 1,336 remaining eligible and 1,113 becoming newly ineligible. Researchers successfully followed 2,333 households through the subsequent survey.

The economic circumstances of these families show why BISP mattered. Average household size was around 6.5 people, monthly expenditure was approximately PKR 16,000, and 84–85% of participating women were illiterate. BISP represented around 15% of household expenditure and an estimated 7.3% of consumption.

For women personally, however, its importance was considerably greater. Around 88% did not work for pay, meaning BISP was effectively the only income brought into the household by most recipients. Some 54% said they alone decided how their BISP money was spent.

Yet one year after payments stopped, researchers found no significant deterioration in decision-making power, mobility, employment, relationship quality, mental health, happiness or life satisfaction.

The Feared Household Backlash Did Not Materialise

One major concern for policymakers is that suddenly withdrawing a benefit paid directly to women could trigger household conflict. Husbands or relatives might blame women for losing the payment or suspect them of continuing to receive money secretly.

This was particularly important because vulnerability was already high. At baseline, around 34% of women reported some form of intimate partner violence. About 18% reported physical violence, 12% sexual violence, 22% emotional violence and 19% controlling behaviour.

Despite this difficult starting point, programme exit produced no detectable increase in physical, sexual, emotional or controlling violence. Nearly 94% of women who exited BISP said they had never been blamed by husbands or in-laws when payments were late, lower than expected or stopped.

Researchers also found no significant deterioration in children's school enrolment, educational expenditure or child labour. Spending on clothing and consumption of higher-quality foods such as meat, eggs and fruit showed no significant change attributable to programme exit.

Graduation Needs a Safety Net, Not a Sudden Exit Door

For governments, the research provides evidence that carefully managed graduation from cash-transfer programmes does not necessarily destroy gains in women's empowerment. But it should not be interpreted as evidence supporting broad welfare cuts.

The households studied were close to BISP's eligibility threshold and were therefore not Pakistan's poorest households. The researchers warn that consequences could be substantially greater if assistance were withdrawn from extremely poor families that depend more heavily on transfers.

Another concern is communication. By the follow-up survey, newly ineligible households had missed two PKR 14,000 payments. Although 87% knew they were no longer beneficiaries, 51% did not know why they had been removed.

Governments should therefore combine regular beneficiary reassessments with advance notification, transparent eligibility rules, effective appeals mechanisms and monitoring after exit. Households highly dependent on transfers may need phased graduation or complementary livelihood support rather than abrupt removal.

International development partners can help governments strengthen social registries, digital payment infrastructure, targeting systems and long-term evaluations. Future programmes should track not just poverty but women's employment, nutrition, household consumption, violence, children's education and financial resilience after benefits end.

From Cash Transfers to Economic Opportunity

The findings also create an important agenda for the private sector. Banks, fintech companies, insurers, telecommunications providers and employers could help connect graduating beneficiaries with savings, insurance, skills, digital financial services and employment opportunities.

But the research provides a warning against assuming that stopping welfare automatically encourages people to work. Despite losing the transfer, women did not significantly increase employment or working hours. With 88% initially outside paid employment, cash-transfer graduation alone cannot overcome structural barriers preventing women from entering labour markets.

For policymakers and development partners, this means social protection should increasingly connect with skills development, financial inclusion and employment policies. Private firms can participate, but financial products must be affordable and appropriate for low-income households rather than replacing public assistance with expensive debt.

Pakistan's experience ultimately suggests that the success of social protection should not be measured simply by how many beneficiaries governments can remove from welfare rolls. The more important question is whether families remain resilient afterward. Future research should particularly examine poorer and more transfer-dependent households over longer periods. For governments, development partners and businesses, the goal should be to turn programme graduation into a bridge toward sustainable economic participation rather than simply the end of a payment.