Tia Palermo's (UNICEF Innocenti) presentation at the Transfer Project Workshop in Arusha, Tanzania on 3rd April 2019.

1. Impacts of Ghana LEAP 1000
through a gendered lens
Tia Palermo
UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti
On Behalf of the LEAP 1000 Evaluation Team
Transfer Project Workshop
Arusha, Tanzania
April 3rd, 2019

2. LEAP 1000 Evaluation Team
UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti: Tia Palermo (co-Principal Investigator),
Richard de Groot, Elsa Valli;
Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana:
Isaac Osei-Akoto (co-Principal Investigator), Clement Adamba, Joseph K. Darko,
Robert Darko Osei, Francis Dompae and Nana Yaw;
Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Clare
Barrington (co-Principal Investigator), Gustavo Angeles, Sudhanshu Handa (co-
Principal Investigator), Frank Otchere, Marlous de Miliano;
Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC): Akalpa J. Akaligaung (co-Principal
Investigator) and Raymond Aborigo.

3. Background
• Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme (LEAP):
objectives:
• Reduce poverty through increasing consumption and promoting access to
services and opportunities among the extreme poor and vulnerable
• Poverty is gendered and therefore sustainable poverty reduction
cannot be achieved without addressing gender inequities
• Gender-sensitive social protection
• Structural constraints impede access to productive assets (land, credit) and
physical, social and human capital assets (health, nutrition, education)

4. The Ghana LEAP programme
• Ghana Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) – national
programme reaching 327,000 households
• LEAP 1000: Pilot in two regions in Northern Ghana, app. 6,000
households with infants/pregnant woman
• Selection based on demographic eligibility and proxy means test
(PMT)
• Cash transfers: GH₵38 – 53 (USD 9.50 – 13.25) per month
• Approximately 14% of baseline consumption expenditures
• Integrated SP component: fee waiver for enrolment in National
Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)

5. Gender-sensitive components of LEAP 1000
• Unconditional
• More gender-sensitive than conditional cash transfers (CCT), which may
increase women’s time poverty and unpaid care (or shift unpaid care to
adolescent girls)
• Beneficiary
• Females directly receive the transfer
• Life-course approach in targeting
• Recognizes vulnerabilities related to reproduction and maternity
• Linkages to health services
• Fee waiver for enrolment in National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)

6. Research questions
• How does LEAP 1000 affect women’s well-being?
• Savings
• Agency and decision-making
• Happiness
• Life satisfaction
• Social support
• Intimate partner violence (IPV): experience & pathways
• Are there differential impacts on time use between males and
females?

7. Methods: Evaluation Design and sample
 2-year mixed method, quasi-experimental,
longitudinal study
 8,058 households enumerated by
government and 3,619 determined eligible
 Evaluation aimed to include 1,250 households +
10% on either side of PMT cut-off
 Baseline (Jul-Sept 2015), Endline (Jul-Sept
2017)
 Final evaluation sample N=2,497 households
(1,262 T and 1,235 C)
Districts: Yendi, Karaga, East Mamprusi,
Bongo Garu Tempane

8. Savings,
happiness, life satisfaction,
agency & decision-making
Ghana LEAP 1000
(© Michelle Mills)

9. Happiness, life satisfaction, savings (binary)
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Happiness Satisfied with life Saving money
Treatment Control
12pp**
4.4pp**
0pp

10. Amount saved, agency & decision-making
(continuous indicators)
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Amount saved (cedis) Agency score Control over life Decion-making ability
Treatment Control
6***
0.2
0.230.25

11. Social support
Ghana LEAP 1000
(© Michelle Mills)

12. Social support
I was in a self-help group where
we…support each other...
Later I left the group because I
couldn’t contribute but when the
LEAP 1000 support started I joined
the group again and I was made the
group leader again. When my
husband died they came to support
me with food including rice, cooking
oil, tomatoes, bread and cash, and
all came from the contributions we
do. (Mother of 3 children, Karaga)
51.5
52
52.5
53
53.5
54
54.5
55
Treatment Control
3.3***

13. Time use
Ghana LEAP 1000
(© Michelle Mills)

14. Time use, by gender and age

15. Intimate partner
violence (IPV)
Ghana LEAP 1000
(© Michelle Mills)

16. Intimate Partner Violence
• Overall IPV experience
 No reductions in overall experience among full sample
 5 - 8 percentage point decreases in overall IPV experience
among monogamous sample only (6 pp emotional, 5 pp
physical & 8 pp combined IPV)
 However, no protective effects among women in polygamous
unions, who are at increased risk of IPV overall
• Frequency of IPV
 0.09 - 0.11 standard deviation decrease among full sample
(0.11 emotional, 0.09 physical & 0.11 combined IPV)

17. Summary and conclusions
 Results underscore that cash transfers can improve wellbeing
beyond primary program objectives
 Could they do more if gender sensitive in design?
 What are realistic expectations?
 Findings indicate that target group & family structure matters in
delivering impacts – yet we know little about why or how
 We are not able to break out the contribution of the integrated
component (health insurance waiver)
 Missed opportunity to study impacts of move from manual to
electronic payment on women’s empowerment – opportunities in
other countries?

18. Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the support of the Government of Ghana for the implementation of this
evaluation, in particular William Niyuni, Mawutor Ablo and Richard Adjetey from the Ministry of
Gender, Children and Social Protection. In addition, the UNICEF Ghana team was instrumental
to the success of this impact evaluation: Sara Abdoulayi, Luigi Peter Ragno, Jennifer Yablonski,
Sarah Hague, Maxwell Yiryele Kuunyem, Tayllor Spadafora, Christiana Gbedemah and Jonathan
Nasonaa Zakaria.
We would also like to acknowledge the hard-working field teams of ISSER and NHRC, who
conducted the data collection for this study to the highest standards.
Funding for the evaluation was generously provided by the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) and the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA). Additional funding to include intimate partner violence modules in the evaluation and
to produce this paper was received from an Anonymous donor and the American World Jewish
Services by the UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti via the US Fund for UNICEF. We thank
Laura Meucci and Michelle Kate Godwin for grant administrative support.

19. Meda ase
Asante
Zikomo
Thank you
Ghana LEAP 1000
(© Michelle Mills)