The Long term Impacts of a “Graduation” Program: Evidence from West Bengal

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, and Jeremy Shapiro.

ABSTRACT

This note reports on the long run (seven-year) impact of Bandhan’s “Targetting the Hard Core Poor program”, a multifaceted anti-poverty program which includes an asset transfer and support for 18 months, in West Bengal, India. Evaluations in seven different sites, including West Bengal (reported in Banerjee et al (2015) and Bandiera et al (2016)) find large effect of the programs, 3 years after it was launched (and 18 months after services ended). In the longer run, we find large, persistent, and often growing impacts: Seven years after the asset were first distributed, the monthly consumption of those assigned to treatment is 16 dollars– or 25%– higher than the consumption of non those assigned to control (the short term effect was 6.6 dollars – or 12%). Positive effects are found across all categories of outcomes (consumption, assets, income, food security, financial stability, time spent working, and physical and mental health), including some outcomes where we did not originally find an effect in the short or medium run. This suggests that the promise of the program to have unlocked a “poverty trap” seem realized, at least in this context.