This review analyses and summarizes impact evaluation findings that focus on the interaction between agricultural interventions (including rural extension services, rural development, natural resource management, access to markets, subsidized credit, investment grants, access to improved seeds and fertilizer subsidies), and social protection interventions, with specific attention to social assistance such as cash transfers and public works.

The Handbook is a resource for World Vision staff and is intended to help them plan and successfully execute an adapted Graduation programme from start to finish (assessment and design, perational planning, and monitoring, learning, and evaluation. Key programmatic examples from designing and implementing adapted Graduation programmes for people affected by displacement are included throughough. Pages 105-110 provides additional detail.

The Philippines’ Department of Social Welfare and Development has taken the lead in providing
opportunities for income generating activities/livelihood development through the implementation
of the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) since 2011, with the objective to reduce poverty and
inequality by generating employment among poor households and by moving highly vulnerable
households into sustainable livelihoods and toward economic stability. This note describes the design

This study is an outcome of the collaborative research agreement
between International Food Policy Research Institute and BRAC. IFPRI’s
Food Consumption and Nutrition Division and BRAC’s Research and
Evaluation Division jointly carried out this study to assess the impact of
the CFPR programme on livelihoods of the ultra poor in Bangladesh.
While several studies have looked into the components of the CFPR programme and its impacts (Rabbani et al. 2006, Haseen and Sulaiman
2007), this study uses rigorous, state-of-the-art techniques to assess the

Authors evaluate the effects of a self-employment program offered to welfare beneficiaries of a large safety net program in Argentina. The program promotes self-employment by providing financial and technical assistance. Our findings show that only a small and selected subset of welfare beneficiaries is attracted to this type of exit strategy (female household heads and more educated).

Authors present evidence from Rwanda's Girinka (‘One Cow per Poor Family’) program that has distributed more than 130,000 livestock asset transfers in the form of cows to the rural poor since 2006. Supply side constraints on the program resulted in some beneficiaries receiving complementary training with the cow transfer, and other households not receiving such training with their cow.

Using a four-round panel data set from the first phase of the Challenging the Frontiers of
Poverty Reduction – Targeting the 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,

Authors study how women’s choices over labor activities in village economies correlate with poverty and whether enabling the poorest women to take on the activities of their richer counterparts can set them on a sustainable trajectory out of poverty

The world’s poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh this paper demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of agricultural labor and into running small businesses. This shift, which persists and strengthens after assistance is withdrawn, leads to a 38% increase in earnings.

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

Authors present results from six randomized control trials of an integrated approach to improve livelihoods amongst the very poor. The approach combines the transfer of a productive asset with consumption support, training and coaching plus savings encouragement and health education and/or services.

A multi-faceted program comprising a grant of productive assets, training, coaching, and savings
has been found to build sustainable income for those in extreme poverty. Authors focus on two
important questions: whether a mere grant of productive assets would generate similar impacts (it
does not), and whether access to a savings account and a deposit collection service would
generate similar impacts (it does not).

This paper studies the long-run effects of a "big-push" program providing a large asset transfer to
the poorest Indian households. In a randomized controlled trial that follows these households over
10 years, we find positive effects on consumption (0.6 SD), food security (0.1 SD), income (0.3
SD), and health (0.2 SD). These effects grow for the first seven years following the transfer and
persist until year 10. One main channel for persistence is that treated households take better

This review retrieves, assesses and synthesises the evidence on the effects of cash transfers on individuals and households through a 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.

Authors analyze a randomized trial of an innovative anti-poverty program in South India, part of a series of pilot programs that provide “ultra-poor” households with inputs to create new, sustainable livelihoods (often tending livestock)

The share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 36
percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015 but has continued to increase in many fragile and conflict-affected areas
where half of the extreme poor are expected to reside by
2030. These areas are also where the least evidence exists
on how to tackle poverty. This paper investigates whether
the Targeting the Ultra Poor program can lift households
out of poverty in a fragile context: Afghanistan. In 80 villages in Balkh province, 1,219 of the poorest households

This study evaluates a large social protection program in rural Ethiopia, the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). The effectiveness of the PSNP is of interest because the program was implemented at scale in one of Africa’s poorest countries, which has limited physical and communications infrastructure and scarce administrative resources.

Earlier reviews of impact evaluations by the World Bank, the OECD, and others have concluded that policy-makers must be cautious regarding what ALMPs can realistically achieve. The evidence suggested that these programs were not a panacea for unemployment but some types of interventions, properly designed, could be effective for some workers. It should be noted that these reviews were based almost exclusively on the experience of industrialized countries because very few evaluations existed anywhere else.

We study two interventions for underemployed youth across five Ethiopian sites: a $300 grant to spur self-employment, and a job offer to an industrial firm. Despite significant impacts on occupational choice, income, and health in the first year, after five years we see nearly complete convergence across all groups and outcomes. Shortrun increases in productivity and earnings from the grant dissipate as recipients exit their micro-enterprises. Adverse effects of factory work on health found after one year also appear to be temporary.

We study a government program in Uganda designed to help the poor and
unemployed become self-employed artisans, increase incomes, and thus promote
social stability. Young adults in Uganda’s conflict-affected north were invited to
form groups and submit grant proposals for vocational training and business
start-up. Funding was randomly assigned among screened and eligible groups.
Treatment groups received unsupervised grants of $382 per member. Grant
recipients invest some in skills training but most in tools and materials.