PEI In Practice. A Standardized Approach to Estimating the Cost of Economic Inclusion Programs

Sarang Chaudhary, Hugo Brousset Chaman and Jenny Swatton

ABSTRACT

There is strong operational demand to better understand the cost drivers, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability of economic inclusion (EI) programs, including how these interventions interact with other services targeting the poor. The unique design and institutional characteristics of EI programs makes costing them both more challenging and more important than it is for traditional safety net programs. This note provides a standardized approach to costing EI programs using the Quick Costing Tool from the Partnership for Economic Inclusion. It offers guidance to programs teams on how to perform costing analysis, highlighting the operational relevance of cost data. It includes three case studies that describe how the tool has been applied to real-world EI programs and reviews the implications of this work for EI programming.