Abstract
Many policies attempt to help extremely poor households build sustainable sources of income. Although economic interventions have predominated historically1,2, psychosocial support has attracted substantial interest3–5, particularly for its potential cost-effectiveness. Recent evidence has shown that multi-faceted ‘graduation’ programmes can succeed in generating sustained changes6,7. Here we show that a multi-faceted intervention can open pathways out of extreme poverty by relaxing capital and psychosocial constraints. We conducted a four-arm randomized evaluation among extremely poor female beneficiaries already enrolled in a national cash transfer government programme in Niger. The three treatment arms included group savings promotion, coaching and entrepreneurship training, and then added either a lump-sum cash grant, psychosocial interventions, or both the cash grant and psychosocial interventions. All three arms generated positive effects on economic outcomes and psychosocial well-being, but there were notable differences in the pathways and the timing of effects. Overall, the arms with psychosocial interventions were the most cost-effective, highlighting the value of including well-designed psychosocial components in government-led multi-faceted interventions for the extreme poor.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 291-297 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 605 |
| Issue number | 7909 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 12 2022 |
Funding
This study is a collaboration between the Government of Niger, the World Bank Sahel Adaptive Social Protection programme, Africa Gender Innovation Lab, DIME and Innovations for Poverty Action. The study was co-funded by the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (TF0A2522, TF0B2819, TF019115) at the World Bank, the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund (TF0A5780) and the Niger Adaptive Safety Nets Project (P166602), managed by Cellule Filets Sociaux (CFS) in the Prime Minister’s office of the Niger Government. The study was pre-registered in the AEA RCT registry: https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2544. It received approval from the Innovations for Poverty Action Institutional Review Board (#00006083). The study underwent blind review at the World Bank Research Department, and results were presented to funders and implementers before publication, without leading to substantive changes in the results. We thank A. M. Maidoka, M. Bouda, K. Aboubacar, M. Moussa, the CFS staff, as well as C. del Ninno, M. M. Amadou and the World Bank Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program team for a fruitful collaboration. CFS led intervention implementation, with technical assistance from the World Bank (led by T.B. and P.P.), Trickle Up (led by J. Sanson and Y. Malle), CESAM (led by D. Zomahoun), R. Audy, S. A. Sambo and D. Dieng. Sahel Consulting (led by A. Hamadou) collected the study data, with support from A. M. Tchibozo at IPA, K. Paré, M. Moussa, M. L. Saley and A. Y. Theodore. Y. Kashlan at IPA and GPRL (Northwestern University) provided outstanding research assistance. We thank C. Bodewig, C. del Ninno, N. Goldberg, M. Grosh, A. Legovini, J. Loeser, H. R. Markus, R. Sedlmayr, G. Walton and seminar participants at IPA and the World Bank for comments. K. Parry copy-edited the manuscript. DIME analytics verified the computational reproducibility of the results. The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the government of Niger, the World Bank and its affiliated organizations, those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank, or the governments they represent.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General
