Have the Poor Benefited? Evidence on Effectiveness and Impact

There is surprisingly little evidence available to indicate the type and extent of the impact of donor-funded interventions on the poor. First, most monitoring and evaluation reports tend to concentrate on physical outputs or on management processes rather than on the actual impact on beneficiaries. To assess impact would require the use of more sophisticated techniques and would cost more. Baseline surveys, which are very rarely conducted, would be needed, as well as the use of ‘control groups’ to compare the well-being of people in ‘with-project’ areas with non-benefiting areas, for instance. Also, only a small minority of interventions have been evaluated, thus sharply reducing the information base available to assess the benefits flowing to the poor. Finally, when monitoring and evaluation studies were carried out, they usually made little attempt to disaggregate impact, or even access to outputs, by socioeconomic group. Although they may be a useful source of information on general implementation effectiveness, they are unsatisfactory guides to the impact on poor groups in particular.