Melissa Hidrobo REGIONAL WORKSHOP SPIR II Learning Event Co-organized by IFPRI, USAID, CARE, ORDA, and World Vision MAY 16, 2023 - 9:00AM TO MAY 17, 2023 - 5:00PM EAT

1. SPIR II RFSA | 2023 Learning Event
Evidence on graduation model social
protection and cash+
Melissa Hidrobo, IFPRI

2. Motivation
• Growing recognition that while providing households with cash or in-kind
transfers improves households’ wellbeing along a number of dimensions,
these programs are not enough to graduate households out of poverty or
improve higher order outcomes such as nutrition.
• Cash+: cash-based programmes with additional components being added
in a bid to reinforce and expand positive impacts
• Graduation: package of interventions aimed at tackling the multifaceted
constraints faced by the poorest in order to “push” them out of poverty

3. Evidence on Cash+
• While short term impacts of Cash+ programmes tends to be positive
on a range of economic, health, and education outcomes (Bastagli
2019), less evidence on longer term impacts
• Long term impacts are mixed
• Multi-country – CCTs lead to sustainable impacts on schooling but not on
learning (Millan 2018)
• Nigeria - CT + nutrition information led to improvements in child health
outcomes 4 years post program (Carneiro 2021).
• Niger - a CT+ saving led to asset accumulation 18 months after program
ended (Stoeffler et al 2020)
• Yemen – asset grant and training added to CT program increased savings
and asset but not consumption or income 4 years later (Brune 2022)

4. Evidence on Cash+
• Few studies on Cash+ are able to disentangle the cash from the plus
component
• Mixed evidence which likely depends on type and quality of the plus
component and the outcome.
• Systematic review shows that the plus component did not generally lead to
larger impacts than cash alone on early childhood outcomes (Little et al
2021)
• Bangladesh: combining cash or food transfers with nutrition training
produced sustained poverty impacts 4 years post program. Cash alone
had context specific impacts (Ahmed et al 2020)
• Nicaragua: Households that received cash combined with productive grant or
vocational training were more protected from weather shock than cash alone
2 years post program (Macours 2022)

5. Evidence Graduation models
• Targeting Ultra Poor (TUP) - multifaceted graduation program which provided a productive
asset grant, training and support, life skills coaching, temporary cash consumption support,
and typically access to savings accounts and health information or services
• Short term impacts (1 year post program):
• 6 country: large improvements across 8 out 10 outcomes including consumption, food
security, assets, time use, income, financial, mental health, and political involvement. Cost
effective in 5 out of 6 countries (Banerjee et al 2015)
• No impact on physical health and women’s empowerment
• Afghanistan- sustained impacts on a range of outcomes (Bedoya et al 2019)
• No impact on child health
• Long term impacts: generally positive
• India – sustained positive impacts 10 years later, with the main pathway being that treated
households were better able to diversify into more lucrative wage employment (Banerjee et al
2020)
• Bangladesh- sustained impacts on assets accumulation and poverty reduction 4 and 7 years
later (Bandiera 2017)
• Ethiopia – sustained impacts on assets and consumption 7 years post program, but no
sustained impacts on other outcomes (Barker 2023)

6. Evidence Graduation models
• Few studies on graduation are able to disentangle the different
components
• Ghana: saving alone or assets alone did not have sustained impacts 3 years later,
which is contrast to full package TUP which lead to significant impacts (Banerjee et al
2022)
• South Sudan: UCT and TUP had short term impacts but only the TUP had sustained
impacts 2 years after the program (Chowdhury 2017).
• Uganda: multifacted microenterprise program increased consumption and assets,
while cash transfers alone did not lead to impacts and cash transfers with
psychological intervention increased assets but did not improve consumption
(Sedlmayr et al 2020)
• Niger: three modalities of a multi-faceted intervention (with cash grant, or
psychosocial intervention, or both) improved consumption, revenues, and
psychosocial well-being, but full modality and one with psychosocial component were
most cost-effective (Bossuroy et al 2022).

7. Conclusion
• Cash alone likely to not lead to large sustained impacts but we
still don’t know optimal bundle of activities.
• Context matters for long term impact, and in particular, what
happens to the control group
• Questions on scalability
• How much can you ask of cash transfer programs with many different
competing priorities for the + components?
• Graduation programs are often small-scale programs with very large
transfers, can they be scalable?

8. References
Ahmed, A., Hidrobo, M., Hoddinott, J., Koch, B., Roy, S., & Tauseef, S. (2020). Social Protection And Sustainable Poverty Reduction: Experimental Evidence From Bangladesh (No. 01988;
IFPRI Discussion Paper).
Bandiera, O., Burgess, R., Das, N., Gulesci, S., Rasul, I., & Sulaiman, M. (2017). Labor markets and poverty in village economies. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 132(2), 811–870.
Banerjee, A., Duflo, E., Goldberg, N., Karlan, D., Osei, R., Parienté, W., Shapiro, J., Thuysbaert, B., & Udry, C. (2015). A multifaceted program causes lasting progress for the very poor:
Evidence from six countries. Science, 348(6236), 1260799. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1260799
Banerjee, A., Duflo, E., & Sharma, G. (2021). Long-Term Effects of the Targeting the Ultra Poor Program. American Economic Review: Insights, 3(4), 471–486.
https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20200667
Barker, N., Karlan, D., Udry, C., & Wright, K. (n.d.). The Fading Treatment Effects of a Multi-Faceted Asset-Transfer Program in Ethiopia.
BASTAGLI, F., HAGEN-ZANKER, J., HARMAN, L., BARCA, V., STURGE, G., & SCHMIDT, T. (2019). The Impact of Cash Transfers: A Review of the Evidence from Low- and Middle-income
Countries. Journal of Social Policy, 48(3), 569-594. doi:10.1017/S0047279418000715
Bedoya, G., Coville, A., Haushofer, J., Isaqzadeh, M., & Shapiro, J. (2019). No Household Left Behind Afghanistan Targeting the Ultra Poor Impact Evaluation.
http://www.worldbank.org/prwp.
Bossuroy, T., Goldstein, M., Karimou, B., Karlan, D., Kazianga, H., Parienté, W., Premand, P., Thomas, C. C., Udry, C., Vaillant, J., & Wright, K. A. (2022). Tackling psychosocial and capital
constraints to alleviate poverty. Nature, 605(7909), 291–297. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04647-8
Brune, L., Karlan, D., Kurdi, S., & Udry, C. (2022). Social protection amidst social upheaval: Examining the impact of a multi-faceted program for ultra-poor households in Yemen. Journal
of Development Economics, 155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102780
Carneiro, P., Kraftman, L., Mason, G., Moore, L., Rasul, I., & Scott, M. (2021). The Impacts of a Multifaceted Prenatal Intervention on Human Capital Accumulation in Early Life. Amercian
Economic Review, 111(8), 2506–2549.
Little, M. T., Roelen, K., Lange, B. C. L., Steinert, J. I., Yakubovich, A. R., Cluver, L., & Humphreys, D. K. (2021). Effectiveness of cash-plus programmes on early childhood outcomes
compared to cash transfers alone: A systematic review and meta-analysis in low- And middle-income countries. PLoS Medicine, 18(9), 1–24.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003698
Millán, T. M., Barham, T., Macours, K., Maluccio, J. A., & Stampini, M. (2019). Long-Term Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfers: Review of the Evidence. The World Bank Research
Observer, 34(1), 119–159. https://doi.org/10.1093/wbro/lky005
Sedlmayr, R., Shah, A., & Sulaiman, M. (2020). Cash-plus: Poverty impacts of alternative transfer-based approaches. Journal of Development Economics, 144.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102418
Stoeffler, Q., Mills, B., & Premand, P. (2020). Poor Households’ Productive Investments of Cash Transfers: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Niger. Journal of African Economies, 29(1),
63–89. https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejz017