Assessing the Impact of the Graduation Approach in the Philippines

Karin Schelzig and Amir Jilani

ABSTRACT

From 2018 to 2020, ADB implemented a pilot project to test the graduation approach, working with 2,400 households in Negros Occidental. One objective was to find cost-effective ways to sustainably reduce poverty and build resilience to socioeconomic shocks. In this brief, ADB highlights the findings and results at the end of the pilot’s implementation period, including promising new evidence from a September 2020 mobile phone survey of 1,243 households. Despite severe impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic especially on poor and vulnerable households, an average of 71% of the participating households met each of the graduation criteria in September 2020. The survey assessed resilience during the pandemic by comparing the experiences of pilot project households with households that only received government cash transfers.