Can and should cash transfers be linked to social welfare?

Abstract

There are proposals that social welfare services be developed in concert with expanding cash transfers to mitigate the impact of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome and poverty on children and families in sub-Saharan Africa. However much the target population might benefit from welfare services, the arguments for pairing services with transfers are not convincing. Cash transfers are best implemented as rights-based entitlements that express the social contract between citizen and state, rather than as a welfare response to need.