Image from Rani Deshpande, Save the Children

By Payal Pathak, New America Foundation

With the “golden age of behavioral research,” as New York Times columnist David Brooks recently described, comes a golden opportunity for the asset building and financial inclusion fields.  Indeed, the latest breakthroughs in social science and behavioral research beg – or perhaps even force – us to think differently about poverty reduction and the policies and mechanisms that can enable it.

Image courtesy of Save the Children

By Payal Pathak, New America Foundation

In the paper, “Youth Savings in Developing Countries,” the YouthSave Consortium explores savings as a tool towards achieving the nexus potential: financial inclusion and youth development. But what if an evolved social protection scheme could give this hypothesis a little nudge forward? The Global Assets Project partnered with the Ford Foundation, United Nations Development Program, Citi Foundation, and Proyecto Capital, to organize the first-ever Global Colloquium on Savings-linked Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs).