SSR Seminar Series: AWWA’s FEP – Results and Insights from an 18-month Cash Transfer RCT for Low-Income Families in Singapore

AWWA’s Family Empowerment Programme (FEP) ran from May 2022 to October 2023. It was a pay-for-success experiment in piloting innovative poverty alleviation tools in Singapore. It provided a stable and predictable monthly cash transfer over 18 months to lower-income families who had been accessing AWWA’s Family Services for at least a year.  The 75 families in the Treatment group received cash transfers of between $300-$550 a month. There were no strings attached to how they could use the money, and the families had the autonomy to spend it according to their unique needs. The 95 families in the Control group did not receive these monthly cash transfers. Families in both the Treatment and Control groups continued to receive wraparound case management from AWWA social workers. 

We used mixed methods to evaluate the FEP. The Treatment Group did consistently better than the Control group on a range of indicators related to employment and well-being, some of which were statistically significant. Our analysis also underscored entrenched challenges lower-income families face, like significant caregiving responsibilities and being unable to find inclusive jobs, which impact their longer-term financial independence and security. The FEP highlighted the benefits of a whole-of-society approach to poverty alleviation.