Paper short abstract:

The combined use of qualitative longitudinal research and social network analysis is used to provide insights into the interaction between social relationships and social protection using the LEAP programme.We show how heterogeneity in prior social relationships drive variation in the wellbeing

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores how social relationships mediate the effects of social protection programmes on poverty and wellbeing. Cash transfers, for example, affect our physical state and how we think, feel and act via social relationships both positively (e.g. allowing us to thank friends with a gift) and negatively (e.g. prompting jealousy among our neighbours). To the extent that social relationships are highly heterogeneous and contextual so, it follows, are the causal mechanisms and wellbeing outcomes of social protection.

This paper demonstrates these propositions by drawing on qualitative longitudinal research into social relationships and the wellbeing of urban recipients of cash transfers under Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme in Ghana.

Using repeat visits to 18 recipients over a year, and adapting a social network approach, the research built up a detailed picture of respondents' informal support networks, and their perception of how their wellbeing was affected by receipt of LEAP transfers. This revealed (a) wide diversity in the relationship between poverty and social relationships among respondents, as well as (b) how these differences resulted in the same transfer entitlement having divergent wellbeing outcome through time. This in turn reveals the methodological limitations of attempting to assess the wellbeing effects of cash transfers and social protection with reference to direct material effects alone, without reference to how they interact with mediating social relationships.