Agriculture and social protection can complement and support each other in reducing hunger and poverty. On the one hand, agricultural… Read more interventions can promote growth in smallholder productivity by addressing structural constraints that limit the access of poor households to land and water resources, inputs, financial services, advisory services and markets. On the other, social protection can provide liquidity and certainty for poor smallholders, allowing them to invest in agriculture, realloca te their labour to on-farm activities, invest in human capital development, increase participation in social networks (which constitute an important source of informal risk management) and better manage risks, thereby allowing them to engage in more profitable livelihood and agricultural activities. Coherence between agricultural development and social protection can be achieved by incorporating social protection objectives, such as risk reduction, in agricultural development and vice versa and by linking activities in the two sectors to create complementarities between programmes. Through the Protection to Production (PtoP) project, led by FAO and UNICEF, considerable evidence has been generated on the productive and economic impacts of social protection and its contribution to sustainable poverty reduction and economic growth in Africa. However, less is known on how to strengthen the links to agricultural development, including the opportunities for doing so and the challenges to be overcome. Case studies were carried out in seven countries across Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Zambia), Asia (Bangladesh) and Latin America (Mexico, Peru). The studies examined programme concepts and methods, coordination and outcomes. Read less ...

This document presents information collected by CGAP and its partners over July-October 2016 on 55 current and new graduation programs… Read more implemented globally. The data was either self-reported by the implementing partner or was collected by interviews with CGAP staff. Comparing this data to the previous information collection (December 2015) shows that efforts to extend economic opportunities to the poorest and most vulnerable populations are gaining traction among governments, donors, and NGOs interested in incorporating graduation-type programming into social protection systems. The graduation programs presented in this document have been adapted—sometimes extensively—from the original BRAC and CGAP-Ford Foundation graduation approach (Figure 2). However they share some common characteristics: (i) a household level intervention deliberately targeting the extreme poor, either those under the $1.90-per-day line and/or those identified as the poorest and most marginalized; (ii) a holistic effort (combining social assistance, livelihoods and financial services) in order to tackle the multifaceted constraints of extreme poverty; (iii) a “big push” based on the idea that a large investment to kick-start an economic activity will really make a meaningful change; (iv) an intervention that includes some form of mentoring to help participants overcome not only their economic constraints but also the many social barriers they face; (5) facilitated access to a wider social protection regime and continued access to financial services as a way to carry on building resilience and upward progress. Read less ...

Targeted interventions that sustainably improve the lives of the poor will be a critical component in eliminating extreme poverty by… Read more 2030. The poorest households tend to be physically and socially isolated and face disadvantages across multiple dimensions, which makes moving out of extreme poverty challenging and costly. This paper compares the cost-effectiveness of three strands of anti-poverty social protection interventions by reviewing 30 livelihood development programs, 11 lump-sum unconditional cash transfers, and seven graduation programs. All the selected graduation initiatives focused on the extreme poor, while the livelihood development and cash transfer programs targeted a broader set of beneficiaries. Impacts on annual household consumption (or on income when consumption data were not available) per dollar spent were used to benchmark cost-effectiveness across programs. Read less ...

Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners,… Read more we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into these accounts or into the male household head’s account (the status quo). Women in a random subset of villages were also trained on account use. In the short run, relative to women just offered bank accounts, those who also received direct deposit and training increased their labor supply in the public and private sectors. In the long run, gender norms liberalized: women who received direct deposit and training became more accepting of female work, and their husbands perceived fewer social costs to having a wife who works. These effects were concentrated in households with otherwise lower levels of, and stronger norms against, female work. Women in these households also worked more in the long run and became more empowered. These patterns are consistent with models of household decision-making in which increases in bargaining power from greater control over income interact with, and influence, gender norms. Read less ...

The Graduation Approach is a holistic livelihoods program which consists of five core components: time-limited consumption support; a savings component;… Read more an asset transfer; training in how to use the asset; and life skills coaching and mentoring. This mix of interventions, offered in the appropriate sequence, helps the ultra-poor to “graduate” out of extreme poverty within a defined time period. Findings from evaluations of the 10 pilots implemented in Asia, Africa and Latin America suggest that the Graduation Approach is an effective and scalable intervention with impacts that are sufficiently robust to persist over time. Based on these interim findings, Ford and CGAP designed an ambitious strategy to reach out to government policy makers to help them understand the potential of the Graduation Approach to serve large numbers of extremely poor people develop sustainable livelihoods and move into the market economy over time. The key is embedding the Graduation Approach in government social protection or large-scale anti-poverty programs. Governments and NGOs will need to adapt the “classic” version of the Graduation Approach as broader integration with social policy happens around the world. Governments face different challenges than NGOs, scaling brings its own set of challenges, and programs must be tailored to address differences in regional contexts. With these factors in mind, the Ford Foundation commissioned case studies of three governments and one large NGO who are scaling the Graduation Approach within their ongoing programs. The Ford Foundation hopes that the lessons provided by the case studies and companion analysis encourage other governments and NGOs to adopt, adapt, and scale an approach that works. Read less ...

BRAC pioneered the Targeting the Ultra Poor programme (TUP) in 2002 in response to extreme poverty. The programme has served… Read more 1.77 million extreme poor households in Bangladesh since its inception, instilling socioeconomic resilience, as well as promoting sustainable livelihoods. We apply a two-year time-bound ‘Graduation’ approach that blends together elements of livelihoods, social safety nets, financial inclusion and social integration - each of which tackles separate aspects of ultra poverty. It combines multidimensional support to address immediate needs of participants using stipends and asset transfers, as well as long-term investments in life skills and technical skills training, enterprise development, positive behavior change, savings and financial planning. Together with close supervision of the participant in individual and group settings, these interventions allow households in ultra poverty to develop livelihoods that multiply their capital and enhance their entrepreneurial skills and decision making abilities, and enable their transition into sustainable livelihoods. The Graduation approach has gained worldwide recognition for its holistic treatment of poverty, and has now been replicated and adapted by stakeholders in the extreme poverty affected regions of the world. Read less ...

Evidence shows that ultra-poor households are typically unable to participate in mainstream poverty alleviation programmes. In response, an international NGO… Read more called BRAC in Bangladesh implemented the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeted Ultra-Poor (CFPR: TUP) programme that explicitly targets those living below $0.60-$0.70/day. The innovative scheme combines the provision of income generating assets with an integrated approach that includes multifaceted training on entrepreneurial activities, health, nutrition, social and political awareness training over a period of two years. A number of papers have established the positive impact of the programme on various socioeconomic indicators of participants and the positive spill overs to non-participants. This is the first paper to evaluate the effects of CFPR on nutritional outcomes using data from a randomised control trial covering 26997 households and panel data over a four year period. We find large improvements in nutritional outcomes among household members who participate in CFPR. The impact is most notable for children under 5 where the likelihood of wasting reduces by 8 percentage points (pp) and the likelihood of being underweight by 19 pp. Behavioural changes, such as increased duration of exclusive breastfeeding, administration of vitamin A appear to be the primary drivers of nutritional improvements for children; while food security and hygiene practices are important pathways for improvements in adults’ nutritional status. Spill over effects on non-participants are generally half the size of the main effect, and are only found for poor non-participants suggesting that behavioural changes are more likely to be adopted by groups of similar socioeconomic status. Overall, we conclude that asset transfer programmes such as the CFPR can have large positive long term health effects and lead to positive externalities. Read less ...

Concern Worldwide has been implementing graduation programmes in a number of countries since 2008 including Zambia, Haiti, Rwanda and Burundi.… Read more These programmes are intended to address extreme poverty at the household level in a sustainable manner. In an effort to find out whether these have worked, and whether certain elements are more important than others, Concern collaborated with the Centre for Social Protection (CSP) at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex to carry out rigorous research in Rwanda and Burundi. The Terintambwe: Taking a Step Forward programme (in Burundi) and the Unleashing the Capacity of the Extreme Poor programme (in Rwanda) were implemented between 2012 and 2016 with funding and technical support from Irish Aid and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). In the research in Burundi, a quasi-experimental randomised control design was utilised which included three rounds of quantitative household surveys (at baseline, midline and endline), administered to both an intervention and control (or comparison) group to allow for difference-in-difference analysis, as well as a substantial qualitative research component. Implemented in cohorts, the Rwanda programme has the advantage of a fourth round of data collected for the first cohort, allowing an assessment of the sustainability of the benefits a full two years after the programme ended. The results from the research were launched at a half day event in Brighton on the 25th October 2016 attended by over thirty participants. Three presentations from Alice Simington, former Country Director for Concern in Rwanda and Burundi and Keetie Roelen and Stephen Devereux from the CSP focussed on the experiences in implementing the programme and some of the key results from the research in the two countries. The following presents a brief overview of research findings and a summary of the lively discussions these prompted during the event. Full research reports from Rwanda and Burundi are available on both the Concern Worldwide and IDS websites. Read less ...

The Social Protection and Decent Rural Employment research programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)… Read more has grown out of the Social Protection Division’s research platform, “From Protection to Production”. The research seeks to gain a better understanding of how social protection policies and programmes can affect – and be improved to enhance impacts upon – decent rural employment. Two case studies will analyse the impact of social protection programmes on decent rural employment, considering in particular the impacts of cash transfer programmes on employment dimensions, including labour allocation, employment creation, decent working conditions, migration patterns and child labour reduction. Based on previous experience through the From Protection to Production (PtoP) programme, the case studies use a mixed-method approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. To achieve comparability and enable cross-country analysis, the research methods are implemented systematically across countries. This Qualitative Research Guide describes in detail the sequencing, timing and methodology of the research process to be implemented in each country of study: training; fieldwork preparation; a simple and clear fieldwork roadmap; the theory of change hypotheses for the studies; guiding questions and research tools. The Guide will be used for conducting qualitative research as part of this programme and will also serve as a basis for future FAO research in social protection and decent rural employment. Read less ...

This paper reviews the major conceptual frameworks and analytical frameworks for applying social protection in rural and agricultural contexts, proposes… Read more a synthesised ‘consolidated’ framework, and reviews the evidence base on the impacts of social protection on agricultural production and rural poverty reduction. Read less ...