Table 3.

Summary of policies appraised and their impact on health/health inequalities

Policy category	Country of operation and policy/action	Policy intention or objectives	Target population	Year commenced	Benefits	Impact on health or health inequalities
Cash-transfers	Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme	Reduce vulnerabi-lity and attain food security for 5–6 million chronically food-insecure people by 2009	Vulnerable women and children, Elderly households, other labour-poor, high-risk households with sick individuals	2005	Improved nutrition intake, Avoid food-selling for medicines or school-fees, Investment in household livelihood activities	Not measured
	Mozambique's INAS cash-transfer programme	Social assistance safety-net aimed at reducing absolute poverty	Vulnerable women and children, elderly and disabled people, socially-excluded persons	1990	Coverage of urban poor, Poverty reduction among urban beneficiaries	Not measured
	Child support grants in South Africa	Poverty relief for vulnerable children	Children up to 14 years	1994/1995	Poverty reduction, Improved child nutrition intake, Improved social cohesion, Improved household economic opportunities	Econometric modelling shows improved childhood nutrition measured by height-for-age
Free social services	Mozambique's free primary education policy	Improve school enrollments and pupil's retention rates	Children in primary school	2005	Increase primary school enrollment	Not measured or known
	South Africa's free healthcare policy	Increase access to care for pregnant women, children, elderly, and disabled	Vulnerable groups, e.g. women, children, users of public-health services, the elderly, disabled	1994/1995	Reduced access barriers to healthcare, Increased service-use	Not measured/ unknown
	Zimbabwe's BEAM	Reduce the number of children dropping out of, or not attending school because of economic hardship	School children in both urban and rural areas, who are unable to attend school, because of economic hardships	2001	Increased school attendance	Not measured/ unknown
Institutional arrangement to ensure integration and improved effectiveness	Botswana's Diphalana Project	Provide uninterrupted basic education for targeted girls by helping to reduce first and repeated pregnancies, Ensure that students who do become pregnant complete school, Improve the scholastic performance of teenage mothers	Pregnant teenage girls and fathers-to-be	1996	Reduction in the number of teenage pregnancies; girls returned to schools,	Not measured
	Gauteng province, South Africa's Bana Pele programme	Integrated and comprehensive pro-poor social services to children	Children up to 14 years	2005	Improved access to and use of existing free services	Not measured/ unknown
	Nigeria's National Poverty Eradication Programme	A coordination facility which aims to spearhead the Government's ambitious programme of eradicating absolute poverty by 2010	Poor people	2001	Youth training, Infrastructure development in rural areas	Not measured/ unknown

BEAM=Basic Education Assistance Module; CSG=Child support grant; INAS=National Institute for Social Welfare