In 2008, Uganda granted hundreds of small groups $400/person to help members start individual
skilled trades. Four years on, an experimental evaluation found grants raised earnings by 38%
(Blattman, Fiala, Martinez 2014). We return after 9 years to find these start-up grants acted more
as a kick-start than a lift out of poverty. Grantees' investment leveled off; controls eventually
increased their incomes through business and casual labor; and so both groups converged in
employment, earnings, and consumption. Grants had lasting impacts on assets, skilled work, and

We show that extremely poor, war-affected women in northern Uganda have high returns to a package
of $150 cash, five days 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

The world's poorand programs to raise their incomesare increasingly concentrated in fragile states. We review the evidence on what interventions work, and whether stimulating employment promotes social stability. Skills training and micronance have shown little impact on poverty or stability, especially relative to program cost. In contrast, injections of capitalcash, capital goods, or livestockseem to stimulate selfemployment and raise long term earning potential, often when partnered with low-cost complementary interventions.

Pre Analysis plan for a multi country RCT in the Sahel Region

A review of rigorous evaluations of interventions that seek to empower women economically shows that the same class of interventions has significantly different outcomes depending on the client. Capital alone, as a small cash loan or grant, is not sufficient to grow women-owned subsistence-level firms. However, it can work if it is delivered in-kind to more successful women microentrepreneurs, and it should boost the performance of Women's larger-sized SMEs.

In this chapter, authors look at three types of approaches i.e. Livelihood, Cash Transfer, and Graduation Approaches and compare them in terms of cost, impact, and targeting.

Public policies frequently are implemented simultaneously rather than in isolation. We estimate the impacts—and possible synergies—of a rural development project (Pro-Gavião) and the Brazilian conditional cash transfer program (Bolsa Família). In partnership with the State Government of Bahia, Pro-Gavião was an IFAD-supported rural development project in 13 contiguous municipalities between 1997 and 2005. Census tract level data were extracted for the analysis from the 1995-96 and 2006 Agricultural Censuses.

The Government of Malawi is currently reviewing the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP), which was initiated in 2005/2006, as a programme to combat poverty and food insecurity. This paper is intended to inform the FISP review and, in particular, how it can be coordinated with the Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP), in order to enable the FISP to more effectively fulfill its objectives of reducing poverty and food insecurity.

Impact evaluations must be embedded in the ongoing process of policy and programme design in order to be effective in 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.

We conduct a randomized experiment among women in urban Sri Lanka to measure the impact of the most commonly used business training course in developing countries, the Start-and-Improve Your Business (SIYB) program. We study two groups of women: a random sample operating subsistence enterprises and a random sample out of the labor force but interested in starting a business. We track impacts of two treatments – training only and training plus a cash grant – over two years.

Although there has been considerable recent interest in micro-credit programs, rigorous evidence on the impacts of forming self-help groups to mobilize savings and foster social empowerment at the local level is virtually non-existent, despite a large number of programs following this pattern. The authors use a large household survey to assess the economic and social impacts of the formation of self-help groups in India.

Since 2011 Concern Worldwide-Rwanda and Services au Développement des
Associations (SDA-IRIBA) with financial support from Irish Aid, have implemented a project called ‘Enhancing the Productive Capacity of Extremely Poor People’, also
known as the ‘Graduation Programme’, in the Southern Province of Rwanda. The

Research on the impact of financial services on the lives of low-income people provides valuable insights. However, these studies tend to focus on microcredit or a single financial product, such as savings or mobile money. As a result, an overly simplistic and product-focused story has emerged.

This paper uses household panel data to provide robust evidence on the effects of
BRAC’s Targeting the Ultra-poor Program in Bangladesh. Our identification strategy
exploits type-1 errors in assignment, comparing households correctly included with those
incorrectly excluded, according to program criteria. Evidence from difference-in-difference
matching and sensitivity analysis shows that participation had significant positive effects on
income, food consumption and security, household durables, and livestock, but no robust

Social protection has been recognized as a key strategy to address poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion in Lesotho. As a result, the Government, with support from UNICEF and the European Union, developed the Child Grants Programme (CGP), which provides unconditional cash transfers to poor and vulnerable households registered in the National Information System for Social Assistance (NISSA).

This study examines the impact of Ethiopia's large-scale social protection programme Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) on local and national economy-wide productivity. PSNP combines public works employment for cash or cereals and direct transfers and is targeted at the poor and vulnerable. It is anticipated,however, that the programme will likely have impacts on non-beneficiaries too. To estimate these impacts, the study uses local economy-wide impact evaluation (LEWIE) model to simulate PSNP and evaluate impacts.

We examine the impact of the Rural Entrepreneur Access Program (REAP), a poverty graduation program that combines multiple interventions with 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.

The overall objective of the ER+ component is to assist ultra-poor women and their families in disaster-prone areas of Bangladesh in lifting themselves above the lower poverty line toward greater food security.

Ethiopia's Food Security Programme provides income transfers through public works in its Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) as well as targeted services provided through the Other Food Security Programme (OFSP) and, later, the Household Asset Building Programme (HABP) designed to improve agricultural productivity. There is a trade-off in these two types of transfers between short-term improvements in food security and longer term food security achieved through increased agricultural productivity.