Do Cash Transfers Foster Resilience? Evidence from Rural Niger

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Pathways out of Extreme Poverty: Tackling Psychosocial and Capital Constraints with a Multi-Faceted Social Protection Program in Niger

“…Some villages were not sampled for the targeting study, thus the stratification had four strata, three for the different targeting methods and one for not being in the targeting study (in which case proxy means testing was employed for targeting). 32 Premand and Stoeffler (2020) study the effects of cash transfers through a RCT embedded in an earlier phase of the Niger program. They find that cash transfers increase consumption, savings and resilience to shocks, but on average have no effects on income-generating activities related to agriculture or household enterprises.…”

COVID-19, Poverty, and Social Safety Net Response in Zambia

“…This is an increase of 10 percentage points from the previous year. If anything, the rapid deleterious effect of COVID-19 generally In these contexts, cash transfers can improve household resilience to these shocks by smoothing consumption (Premand andStoeffler 2020 andUlrichs, et. al.…”

A Comparative Assessment of Resilience Measurement Approaches

“…The Cissé and Barrett (2018) method was developed to directly implement the Barrett and Constas (2014) theory of development resilience, which defines resilience in terms of having an acceptably high likelihood of remaining above the poverty line (or other meaningful wellbeing threshold) even in the face of shocks and stressors. The approach has now been implemented by academic researchers in a variety of contexts (Upton et al 2016, Cissé and Barrett 2018, Alloush 2019, Knippenberg et al 2019, Vaitla et al 2020) and is increasingly used for impact evaluation (Cissé and Ikegami 2016, Phadera et al 2019, Premand and Stoeffler 2020, with some unpublished efforts we are aware of to employ the method for targeting project beneficiaries.…”

“…When one multiplies the RS by 100, the C&B measure therefore uses the same cardinal scale as the RIMA and TANGO RCIs, although the RS reflects a probability while the RCIs are unitless index measures. The C&B method has now been adopted in a range of academic studies in several contexts (Cissé and Ikegami 2016, Upton et al 2016, Alloush 2019, Knippenberg et al 2019, Phadera et al 2019, Premand and Stoeffler 2020, Vaitla et al 2020).…”

“…To date resilience measures have been used largely to build a narrative to motivate development or humanitarian interventions, much less for targeting or impact evaluation (Barrett et al 2021). But targeting and impact evaluation applications have become increasingly widespread as these measures have diffused into broader use (e.g., Smith et al 2015, Cissé and Ikegami 2016, Knippenberg and Hoddinott 2017, Smith and Frankeberger 2018, Phadera et al 2019, Premand and Stoeffler 2020. With program targeting and evaluation increasingly resting on these measures, it becomes especially important to explore whether the measure one chooses matters to how one assesses a (sub-) population's resilience or the impacts of an intervention on their resilience, or to who one might target for intervention.…”