As the debate on the post Millennium Development Goals agenda gathers pace, the ILO calls for job creation and social protection to be included in the list of Development Goals which will be drawn up by the United Nations after the target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals passes in 2015.

Using rural economy-wide impact simulation methods and cost-benefit analysis, this study examines the impacts of individual and combined social protection and agricultural interventions in Malawi on incomes, poverty and production. The goal of this analysis is to provide evidence on policy options to increase coordination and coherence between social protection and agricultural programmes, with the objective of reducing poverty, increasing incomes and enhancing agricultural production and productivity.

Despite evidence from multiple randomized evaluations of microcredit, questions about external validity have impeded consensus on the results. I jointly estimate the average effect and the heterogeneity in effects across seven studies using Bayesian hierarchical models. I find the impact on household business and consumption variables is unlikely to be transformative and may be negligible. I find reasonable external validity: true heterogeneity in effects is moderate, and approximately 60 percent of observed heterogeneity is sampling variation.

The broad-ranging benefits of cash transfers are now widely recognized. However, the evidence base highlights that they often fall short in achieving longer-term and second-order impacts related to nutrition, learning outcomes and morbidity. In recognition of these limitations, several ‘cash plus’ initiatives have been introduced, whereby cash transfers are combined with one or more types of complementary support.

The Graduation Approach is a holistic livelihoods program which consists of five core components: time-limited consumption support; a savings component; 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.

The dramatic transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) between 2000 and the 2010s was driven by fast growth, together with higher employment rates and increased real incomes. During this period of sustained growth, increased fiscal revenues supported the expansion of social protection programs, mainly in the form of non-contributory social assistance. Despite the increasing coverage of social assistance and positive impacts on consumption and other social dimensions, policy makers were aware of the limitations in ensuring the sustainability of those gains.

In a time when measures implemented to keep us safe have shuttered businesses all over the world, Endnog and Lillian have a lot to teach the world about the power of resilience, a skill that is becoming increasingly relevant for all of us.

How can entrepreneurs in emerging markets build their resilience? What tools enable them to adapt when everything around them has changed? The answers to these questions should inform the ways governments support their citizens during a pandemic. Finding these answers is a big part of the work we do at the BOMA Project and Village Enterprise.

BRAC pioneered the Targeting the Ultra Poor programme (TUP) in 2002 in response to extreme poverty. The programme has served 1.77 million extreme poor households in Bangladesh since its inception, instilling socioeconomic resilience, as well as promoting sustainable livelihoods.

There is hardly any argument over the necessity of targeting the ultra-poor in development interventions. However, identifying and scaling up effective strategies to improve livelihoods remains a challenge. A few recent pilots have found an approach that combines transfer of productive assets, and intensive supports and supervision with a set of coordinated interventions following a time-bound exit plan successful. This paper evaluates one such pilot, known as ‘ultrapoor graduation pilot’, implemented by BRAC in Afghanistan.

The ultra poor are caught in a below-subsistence trap from which it is difficult for them to break free using available resources and mechanisms. Time is not an ally for the ultra poor, as things generally do not get better for them over time. More often than not, ultra poverty tends to be chronic and intergenerational. Existing development approaches largely do not work for the ultra poor and consequently, they tend to be left out. The ultra poor rely largely on informal charities, having its own rules of inclusion and exclusion based on complex systems of patronage.

Evidence shows that ultra-poor households are typically unable to participate in mainstream poverty alleviation programmes. In response, an international NGO 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.

BRAC is one of the world’s largest development organizations, and in 2002 pioneered its Ultra-Poor programme in Bangladesh to improve the resilience of the ultra-poor and to address extreme poverty. In this webinar, hosted by socialprotection.org, Sadna Samaranayake (Senior Advisor, BRAC Ultra-Poor Advocacy and Advisory Services) and Michael Samson (Director of Research, Economic Policy Research Institute) presented analysis of BRAC’s success, and its intersection with social protection.

Given the millions of lives at stake, we must pinpoint where social services are most needed and ensure that the social protection programs are evidence-based and inclusive. Research from the International Growth Centre, directed by the London School of Economics and University of Oxford, shows that while social assistance is the main tool to lift people out of poverty, most of the lowest-income people are left behind due to mistargeting and low data quality.

Before COVID-19, many countries were making significant gains in human capital, improving health and education outcomes for girls and boys and empowering women to reach their potential. Between 2010 and March 2020, the World Bank’s Human Capital Index 2020 Update found an average increase of five percent in the human capital index across countries.

The international community cannot work in silos and expect to end extreme poverty. Poverty is multidimensional. The most effective and powerful interventions that empower people to escape the poverty trap address the lives of people living in poverty holistically. A truly holistic approach leverages stakeholders from all parts of society collaborating to uplift people from the most marginalized communities. This is a matter of social justice, not of charity.

Concern Worldwide launched a programme called ‘Enhancing the Productive Capacity of Extremely Poor People’, also known as the ‘Graduation Programme’, in two districts of southern Rwanda – Huye and Nyaruguru – in May 2011.
The Programme supports extremely poor households with a sequenced package that includes: cash transfers to meet basic needs, skills development and asset transfers to improve livelihood options, and savings facilities to buffer risk and fund

This report is the main output from the second round of a three-year research project, commissioned
by Concern Worldwide Bangladesh, which monitors the livelihoods of selected participants of the Irish
Aid-funded programme ‘Improving the Lives of the Urban Extreme Poor’ (ILUEP) in Chattogram and Dhaka. By delivering a comprehensive package of livelihood support, training in business management and coaching in a range of life skills, the ILUEP aims to move 9,000 pavement dweller, slum dweller and squatter households out of extreme poverty and improve their overall wellbeing.

Concern Worldwide has been implementing graduation programmes in a number of countries since 2008 including Zambia, Haiti, Rwanda and Burundi. 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.

Often considered to be one of the most vulnerable countries to the climate change, Bangladesh faces threat to its natural resources, livelihood security and general wellbeing of the people owing to its topography and geographic position. Moreover, vulnerability increases because of the challenges the country faces in adapting to the changing climate and in mitigating the responsible climatic factors. Some regions of the country, such as Char, are more vulnerable to the changing climate than the other parts.

The Social Protection and Decent Rural Employment research programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 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.