IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/deveco/v144y2020ics0304387818305522.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cash-plus: Poverty impacts of alternative transfer-based approaches

Author

Listed:
  • Sedlmayr, Richard
  • Shah, Anuj
  • Sulaiman, Munshi

Abstract

Can training and mentorship expand the economic impact of cash transfer programs, or would such extensions waste resources that recipients could allocate more impactfully by themselves? Over the course of two years, a Ugandan nonprofit organization implemented alternative poverty alleviation approaches in a randomized manner. These included an integrated graduation-style program involving cash transfers as well as extensive training and mentorship; a slightly simplified variant excluding training on savings group formation; and a radically simplified approach that monetized all intangibles and delivered cash only. Light-touch behavioral extensions involving goal-setting and plan-making were also implemented with some cash transfer recipients. We find that simplifying the integrated program tended to erode its impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Sedlmayr, Richard & Shah, Anuj & Sulaiman, Munshi, 2020. "Cash-plus: Poverty impacts of alternative transfer-based approaches," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:144:y:2020:i:c:s0304387818305522
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102418
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387818305522
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102418?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pritchett Lant & Sandefur Justin, 2014. "Context Matters for Size: Why External Validity Claims and Development Practice do not Mix," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 4(2), pages 161-197, March.
    2. Anderson, Michael L., 2008. "Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(484), pages 1481-1495.
    3. Dennis Egger & Johannes Haushofer & Edward Miguel & Paul Niehaus & Michael Walker, 2022. "General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence From Kenya," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(6), pages 2603-2643, November.
    4. Baird, Sarah & Özler, Berk, 2012. "Examining the reliability of self-reported data on school participation," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 89-93.
    5. Angus Deaton, 2010. "Instruments, Randomization, and Learning about Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 424-455, June.
    6. Ljungqvist, Lars, 1993. "Economic underdevelopment : The case of a missing market for human capital," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 219-239, April.
    7. John P A Ioannidis, 2005. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 2(8), pages 1-1, August.
    8. David McKenzie, 2017. "Identifying and Spurring High-Growth Entrepreneurship: Experimental Evidence from a Business Plan Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(8), pages 2278-2307, August.
    9. Dean Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Margaret McConnell & Jonathan Zinman, 2010. "Getting to theTop of Mind: How Reminders Increase Saving," Working Papers id:2587, eSocialSciences.
    10. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2003. "Measuring the Well-Being of the Poor Using Income and Consumption," NBER Working Papers 9760, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Christopher Blattman & Eric P. Green & Julian Jamison & M. Christian Lehmann & Jeannie Annan, 2016. "The Returns to Microenterprise Support among the Ultrapoor: A Field Experiment in Postwar Uganda," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 35-64, April.
    12. Matthew Rabin & Ted O'Donoghue, 1999. "Doing It Now or Later," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 103-124, March.
    13. Beegle, Kathleen & De Weerdt, Joachim & Friedman, Jed & Gibson, John, 2012. "Methods of household consumption measurement through surveys: Experimental results from Tanzania," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 3-18.
    14. César Martinelli & Susan Wendy Parker, 2009. "Deception and Misreporting in a Social Program," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(4), pages 886-908, June.
    15. Christopher Blattman & Nathan Fiala & Sebastian Martinez, 2018. "The Long Term Impacts of Grants on Poverty: 9-year Evidence From Uganda's Youth Opportunities Program," NBER Working Papers 24999, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Tessa Bold & Mwangi Kimenyi & Germano Mwabu & Alice Ng'ang'a & Justin Sandefur, 2013. "Scaling-up What Works: Experimental Evidence on External Validity in Kenyan Education," CSAE Working Paper Series 2013-04, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    17. Alberto Abadie & Susan Athey & Guido W Imbens & Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2023. "When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(1), pages 1-35.
    18. Najy Benhassine & Florencia Devoto & Esther Duflo & Pascaline Dupas & Victor Pouliquen, 2015. "Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 86-125, August.
    19. Katherine Casey & Rachel Glennerster & Edward Miguel, 2012. "Reshaping Institutions: Evidence on Aid Impacts Using a Preanalysis Plan," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(4), pages 1755-1812.
    20. Oriana Bandiera & Robin Burgess & Narayan Das & Selim Gulesci & Imran Rasul & Munshi Sulaiman, 2017. "Labor Markets and Poverty in Village Economies," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 811-870.
    21. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1989. "Markets, Market Failures, and Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 197-203, May.
    22. Banerjee, Abhijit & Karlan, Dean & Osei, Robert & Trachtman, Hannah & Udry, Christopher, 2022. "Unpacking a multi-faceted program to build sustainable income for the very poor," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    23. Karlan, Dean & Knight, Ryan & Udry, Christopher, 2015. "Consulting and capital experiments with microenterprise tailors in Ghana," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 281-302.
    24. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    25. Benjamin A. Olken, 2015. "Promises and Perils of Pre-analysis Plans," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 61-80, Summer.
    26. Easterly, William, 2007. "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill And So Little Good," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199226115.
    27. McKenzie, David, 2012. "Beyond baseline and follow-up: The case for more T in experiments," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 210-221.
    28. Jeffrey R Kling & Jeffrey B Liebman & Lawrence F Katz, 2007. "Experimental Analysis of Neighborhood Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 83-119, January.
    29. Fiala, Nathan, 2018. "Returns to microcredit, cash grants and training for male and female microentrepreneurs in Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 189-200.
    30. Myron J. Gordon & Eli Shapiro, 1956. "Capital Equipment Analysis: The Required Rate of Profit," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(1), pages 102-110, October.
    31. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1989. "Markets and Development," NBER Working Papers 2961, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    32. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Rema Hanna & Gabriel E. Kreindler & Benjamin A. Olken, 2017. "Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient: Evidence from Cash Transfer Programs," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 32(2), pages 155-184.
    33. Robert Jensen, 2010. "The (Perceived) Returns to Education and the Demand for Schooling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 515-548.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leight, Jessica & Hirvonen, Kalle & Zafar, Sarim, 2024. "The effectiveness of cash and cash plus interventions on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis," OSF Preprints dnc2r, Center for Open Science.
    2. Baird, Sarah & McIntosh, Craig & Özler, Berk & Pape, Utz, 2024. "Asset transfers and anti-poverty programs: Experimental evidence from Tanzania," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    3. Lagomarsino, Bruno Cardinale & Rossi, Martin A., 2024. "JUE insight: The unintended effect of Argentina's subsidized homeownership lottery program on intimate partner violence," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    4. Xia, Fangzhou & Huang, Jing & Zhang, Zhengfeng, 2024. "Government concerns, the benefit cliff, and land use: A comparative study of rural impoverished and marginalised impoverished groups," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    5. McIntosh, Craig & Zeitlin, Andrew, 2022. "Using household grants to benchmark the cost effectiveness of a USAID workforce readiness program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    6. Ding, Chante Jian & Zhao, Mu & Wang, Jiaxin & Shao, David Xuefeng & Miah, Shah J. & Yue, Lin, 2024. "Social robots in the context of corporate participation in rural revitalization: A binary legitimacy perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    7. Lenel, Friederike & Priebe, Jan & Satriawan, Elan & Syamsulhakim, Ekki, 2022. "Can mHealth campaigns improve CCT outcomes? Experimental evidence from sms-nudges in Indonesia," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sedlmayr, Richard, 2018. "Rewarding Poverty Alleviation: A Case Study in Payment-by-Results," SocArXiv hdr78, Center for Open Science.
    2. Edmonds, Eric & Theoharides, Caroline, 2020. "The short term impact of a productive asset transfer in families with child labor: Experimental evidence from the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    3. Christopher Blattman & Julian C. Jamison & Margaret Sheridan, 2015. "Reducing crime and violence: Experimental evidence from cognitive behavioral therapy in Liberia," NBER Working Papers 21204, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Christopher Blattman & Stefan Dercon, 2016. "Occupational Choice in Early Industrializing Societies: Experimental Evidence on the Income and Health Effects of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Work," Working Papers id:11361, eSocialSciences.
    5. Blattman, Christopher & Dercon, Stefan & Franklin, Simon, 2022. "Impacts of industrial and entrepreneurial jobs on youth: 5-year experimental evidence on factory job offers and cash grants in Ethiopia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    6. Jeffrey D. Michler & Anna Josephson, 2022. "Recent developments in inference: practicalities for applied economics," Chapters, in: A Modern Guide to Food Economics, chapter 11, pages 235-268, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Jörg Peters & Jörg Langbein & Gareth Roberts, 2018. "Generalization in the Tropics – Development Policy, Randomized Controlled Trials, and External Validity," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 33(1), pages 34-64.
    8. Eszter Czibor & David Jimenez‐Gomez & John A. List, 2019. "The Dozen Things Experimental Economists Should Do (More of)," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 371-432, October.
    9. McIntosh, Craig & Zeitlin, Andrew, 2022. "Using household grants to benchmark the cost effectiveness of a USAID workforce readiness program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    10. Karthik Muralidharan & Paul Niehaus, 2017. "Experimentation at Scale," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 103-124, Fall.
    11. Cameron, Lisa & Olivia, Susan & Shah, Manisha, 2019. "Scaling up sanitation: Evidence from an RCT in Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 1-16.
    12. Damgaard, Mette Trier & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2018. "Nudging in education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 313-342.
    13. Marshall Burke & Lauren Falcao Bergquist & Edward Miguel, 2019. "Sell Low and Buy High: Arbitrage and Local Price Effects in Kenyan Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 785-842.
    14. Mo, Di & Bai, Yu & Shi, Yaojiang & Abbey, Cody & Zhang, Linxiu & Rozelle, Scott & Loyalka, Prashant, 2020. "Institutions, implementation, and program effectiveness: Evidence from a randomized evaluation of computer-assisted learning in rural China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    15. Blattman, Christopher & Jamison, Julian & Koroknay-Palicz, Tricia & Rodrigues, Katherine & Sheridan, Margaret, 2016. "Measuring the measurement error: A method to qualitatively validate survey data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 99-112.
    16. Simon Franklin & Clément Imbert & Girum Abebe & Carolina Mejia-Mantilla, 2024. "Urban Public Works in Spatial Equilibrium: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(5), pages 1382-1414, May.
    17. Giambra, Samuele & McKenzie, David, 2021. "Self-employment and migration," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    18. Peters, Jörg & Langbein, Jörg & Roberts, Gareth, 2016. "Policy evaluation, randomized controlled trials, and external validity—A systematic review," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 51-54.
    19. Gazeaud, Jules & Khan, Nausheen & Mvukiyehe, Eric & Sterck, Olivier, 2023. "With or without him? Experimental evidence on cash grants and gender-sensitive trainings in Tunisia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    20. Chowdhury, Shyamal & Smits, Joeri & Sun, Qigang, 2020. "Contract structure, time preference, and technology adoption," GLO Discussion Paper Series 633, Global Labor Organization (GLO).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Graduation; Microenterprise; Cash transfers; Behavioral design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O22 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Project Analysis
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:144:y:2020:i:c:s0304387818305522. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/devec .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.