Social cash transfers can greatly improve the lives of poor and vulnerable people through reduced poverty and improved food security.… Read more However, for households that are exposed to several stressors, a cash transfer program might not be sufficient to respond to all of the households’ needs. There are some specific areas where the cash transfers have not yet showed a strong impact. One of the most important of these is child anthropometrics, even though programs consistently improve food security. This has led to a number of examples of cash transfer programs being combined with additional services to the households and programs addressing structural constraints to overcome these challenges. During the Transfer Project workshop, which was held 6-8 April 2016, a number of country case studies were presented including planned and ongoing interventions that complement social cash transfer programmes. Below we have documented these case studies for other countries that might be considering ‘cash+’ type interventions. Please note this is an ‘unofficial’ summary of what was presented and/or discussed at the Transfer Project Workshop, and we encourage readers to contact the program focal point directly for further details about program design. Below are examples from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauretania, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Read less ...

This policy guide opens up new ground in reviewing the contribution of social protection programmes in facilitating sustained escapes from… Read more poverty through the productive inclusion of poor individuals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICS). The overarching question to which it seeks to respond is: what are the key features of existing programmes that allow poor people to sustainably escape from poverty in a cost-effective and scalable way? To answer this question, this policy guide looks at evidence from social protection programmes with innovative designs that combine different interventions, either following a graduation approach or by building integrated social protection systems. This comparative approach is new and offers insights for policy-makers seeking to design integrated social protection systems that fulfil protective and preventive functions as well as maximise their promotive and transformative potential in order to lift people out of poverty in a sustained way Read less ...

This handbook, “Employment Promotion in Development Cooperation”, places strong emphasis on the central role of employment for poverty reduction, as well… Read more as improved living standards, productivity, economic development, and social cohesion. Its goal is to provide support for policy makers and development cooperation practitioners in regard to these and other issues and interrelationships towards anchoring their long-term promotion in Germany’s development cooperation projects and strategic approaches. The handbook encompasses numerous conceptual approaches developed in German and international development cooperation in the realm of employment and offers insight into experience gained from measures that have been implemented. Read less ...

Using a four-round panel data set from the first phase of the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the… Read more Ultra Poor (CFPR – TUP) programme of BRAC, authors investigate whether a one-off transfer of livestock assets improves well-being of the very poor women in Bangladesh. Programme impact is assessed on a wide range of monetary and nonmonetary measures of wellbeing using difference-in-difference (DD) as well as matching methods. They find significant positive long-term impact on food security, household savings, assets and participation in microfinance. Participant women are less likely to be in distress occupation and more into self-employment. However, the long-term effect is much smaller for most outcomes when compared to short- and medium-run impacts. Authors conclude by discussing the significance of the institutional and regional context for the observed time path of estimated programme effect. Read less ...

This note reports on the long run (seven-year) impact of Bandhan’s “Targetting the Hard Core Poor program”, a multifaceted anti-poverty program… Read more 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. Read less ...

This review retrieves, assesses and synthesises the evidence on the effects of cash transfers on individuals and households through a… Read more rigorous review of the literature of 15 years, from 2000 to 2015. Focusing on non-contributory monetary transfers, including conditional and unconditional cash transfers, social pensions and enterprise grants. Read less ...

We show that extremely poor, war-affected women in northern Uganda have high returns to a package of $150 cash, five days… Read more of business skills training, and ongoing supervision. 16 months after grants, participants doubled their microenterprise ownership and incomes, mainly from petty trading. We also show these ultrapoor have too little social capital, but that group bonds, informal insurance, and cooperative activities could be induced and had positive returns. When the control group received cash and training 20 months later, we varied supervision, which represented half of the program costs. A year later, supervision increased business survival but not consumption. Read less ...

Impact evaluations must be embedded in the ongoing process of policy and programme design in order to be effective in… Read more influencing country policy. This is the primary lesson found in this book, which is based on the rigorous impact evaluations and country-case study analysis of government-run cash transfer programmes undertaken in eight sub-Saharan African countries (Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi, and South Africa) evaluated as part of the Transfer Project and From Protection to Production Project. The impact evaluations employed mixed method approaches, including randomized controls trials (RCTs) and non-experimental designs, qualitative methods and village LEWIE (Local Economy-Wide Impact Evaluation)-CGE (computable general equilibrium) modelling. Evidence presented in the book counteracts concerns around social protection creating dependency showing that unconditional cash transfers lead to a broad range of social and productive impacts, even though they are not tied to any specific behaviour. Lessons on the political economy of evaluations suggest that evaluations help build the credibility of the social protection sector, strengthen the case for social protection as an investment, address public concerns around transfers, and support learning around programme design. Read less ...

Since 2011 Concern Worldwide-Rwanda and Services au Développement des Associations (SDA-IRIBA) with financial support from Irish Aid, have implemented a project… Read more called ‘Enhancing the Productive Capacity of Extremely Poor People’, also known as the ‘Graduation Programme’, in the Southern Province of Rwanda. The programme targets extremely poor households – defined as those who are unable tomeet their basic needs for food, health care, shelter, and education. The programme delivers a package of support that includes cash transfers to meet basic needs – averaging RwF.18,000 (about €22) per household per month – skills development and resources to improve livelihoods, and improved savings to increase resilience to shocks. In addition, intensive coaching is provided by volunteer Community Development Animators (CDAs) who each visit approximately 15 beneficiaries twice every month. This package is similar but not identical to the support delivered by ‘graduation model’ programmes in Bangladesh and several other countries, and itshares the same objective of enabling sustainable exits from extreme poverty. By the end of the project cycle, beneficiaries are expected to have ‘graduated’ into self-reliant livelihoods. This final report aims to identify trends in participants’ human, social and financial wellbeing over time, to quantify any changes that are attributable to the Graduation Programme, and to identify factors that either enable or constrain sustained improvements in key outcome indicators. Specifically, the evaluation tested several hypotheses around a set of indicators that were monitored before, during and after the programme was implemented. Participants were expected to increase their asset ownership, food security, spending on basic needs, savings, ability to borrow and repay loans, investment in education, investment in health and preventative health care, hygiene practices, empowerment over household decision-making, and engagement in social activities and community institutions, in comparison to controlgroup households. Participating households were also expected to diversify their income sources, and to reduce their levels of deprivation and adoption of damaging coping strategies, thanks to their participation in the Graduation Programme. Read less ...

We examine the impact of the Rural Entrepreneur Access Program (REAP), a poverty graduation program that combines multiple interventions with… Read more the aim of promoting en- trepreneurship among ultra-poor women. The program emphasizes cash transfers (rather than asset transfers) to ultra-poor women, in addition to business skills training, business mentoring and savings. Participation in each of three rounds of the program was randomly determined through a public lottery. In the short-to-medium-run we find that the program has a positive and significant impact on income, savings, asset accumulation, and food security that are similar to more traditional poverty graduation programs that rely on asset transfers. Read less ...