This paper uses panel household-level data from the years 2011 and 2013 to study the targeting performance and the short-term welfare effects of Pakistan’s Benazir Income Support Program (BISP). The BISP is an unconditional cash transfer for poor, ever-married female heads of the household, and it relies on a proxy means test (PMT) to identify its recipients. I employ a difference-in-difference comparison across beneficiary and control households to evaluate the treatment effect of the BISP on household consumption, saving, and debt; indicators of child welfare; and female empowerment. I find that the BISP’s PMT model is now outdated and that its execution has been ineffective in identifying the targeted recipients. Moreover, the BISP has had no significant effect on household consumption of food and other non-durable goods, household saving and debt, the anthropometric status of children, or the incidence of child labor. However, the BISP has significantly increased non-food expenditures on health, housing, apparel, and other relatively inexpensive durable goods, implying that its quarterly nature has helped in mitigating households’ saving and credit constraints, and smoothened their consumption over time. It has also improved women’s outcomes on most indicators of empowerment, particularly being able to access small amounts of cash in cases of emergencies, and voting in national, provincial and local body elections.