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Revisiting poverty trends and the role of social protection systems in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic
Quantifying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty in Africa has been as difficult as predicting the path of the pandemic, mainly due to data limitations. The advent of new data sources, including national accounts and phone survey data, provides an opportunity for a thorough reassessment of the impact of the pandemic and the subsequent expansion of social protection systems on the evolution of poverty in Africa. In this paper, we combine per capita GDP growth from national accounts with data from High-Frequency Phone Surveys for several countries to estimate the net impact of the pandemic on poverty. We find that the pandemic has increased poverty in Africa by 1.5-1.7 percentage poi...
Targeting social assistance in fragile settings: An experiment on community-based targeting
Targeting is an important but challenging process in the design and delivery of social and humanitarian assistance programs. Community-based targeting (CBT) approaches are often preferred for their local information advantages, especially when data-driven methods are not feasible. However, how different variants of CBT approaches fare under various constraints and environments remains unclear. For example, it is not obvious whether agents involved in CBT maximize the number of beneficiaries or the intensity of transfers when given different levels of discretion or they face budget constraints. We implemented a clustered randomized control trial among community leaders in 180 villages in Ethi...
Assessing response fatigue in phone surveys: Experimental evidence on dietary diversity in Ethiopia
The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred interest in the use of remote data collection techniques, including phone surveys, in developing country contexts. This interest has sparked new methodological work focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of remote data collection, the use of incentives to increase response rates and how to address sample representativeness. By contrast, attention given to associated response fatigue and its implications remains limited. To assess this, we designed and implemented an experiment that randomized the placement of a survey module on women’s dietary diversity in the survey instrument. We also examine potential differential vulnerabilitie...
COVID-19 and food security in Ethiopia: Do social protection programs protect?
We assess the impact of Ethiopia’s flagship social protection program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and nutrition security of households, mothers, and children. We use both pre-pandemic in-person household survey data and a post-pandemic phone survey. Two thirds of our respondents reported that their incomes had fallen after the pandemic began and almost half reported that their ability to satisfy their food needs had worsened. Employing a household fixed effects difference-in-difference approach, we find that the household food insecurity increased by 11.7 percentage points and the size of the food gap by 0.47 months in t...
Near-real-time welfare and livelihood impacts of an active civil war: Evidence from Ethiopia
Ethiopia is currently embroiled in a large-scale civil war that has continued for more than a year. Using unique High-Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) data, which spans several months before and after the outbreak of the war, this paper provides fresh evidence on the ex durante impacts of the conflict on the food security and livelihood activities of affected households. We use difference-in-differences estimation to compare trends in the outcomes of interest across affected and unaffected regions (households) and before and after the outbreak of the civil war. Seven months into the conflict, we find that the outbreak of the civil war increased the probability of moderate to severe food insecur...
COVID-19 and global food security: Two years later
Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health, economic, and social disruptions caused by this global crisis continue to evolve. The impacts of the pandemic are likely to endure for years to come, with poor, marginalized, and vulnerable groups the most affected. In COVID-19 & Global Food Security: Two Years Later, the editors bring together contributions from new IFPRI research, blogs, and the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub to examine the pandemic’s effects on poverty, food security, nutrition, and health around the world. This volume presents key lessons learned on food security and food system resilience in 2020 and 2021 and assesses the effectiveness of policy responses to the crisis. Looking forward, the authors consider how the pandemic experience can inform both recovery and longer-term efforts to build more resilient food systems.
Can a light-touch graduation model enhance livelihood outcomes? Evidence from Ethiopia
In recent years, a growing literature has examined the potential of multifaceted, intensive “graduation model” interventions that simultaneously address multiple barriers constraining households’ exit from poverty. In this paper, we present new evidence from a randomized trial of a lighter-touch graduation model implemented in rural Ethiopia. The primary experimental arms are a bundled intervention including a productive transfer valued at $374 (randomly assigned to be cash or an equivalent value in poultry), training, and savings groups; a simpler intervention including training and savings groups only; and a control arm. We find that three years post-baseline, the intervention inclusive of the transfer leads to some increases in assets, savings, and cash income from livestock, though there is no shift in consumption or household food security; these effects are consistent regardless of the modality of the transfer (cash versus poultry). The effects of training and savings groups alone are minimal.
Including scalable nutrition interventions in a graduation model program: Experimental evidence from Ethiopia
We explore the impact of different models of scalable nutrition services embedded within a light-touch graduation program, implemented at scale in Ethiopia. The graduation program provided poor households enrolled in Ethiopia’s national safety net, the Protective Safety Net Program (PSNP), with additional livelihood programming including savings groups, business skills training and linkages to financial services. In addition, extremely poor households received a one-time livelihood grant on an experimental basis, as cash transfers or in-kind poultry grants, at a value much smaller than lump sum transfers in other graduation model programs in recent literature. The experiment compared a cor...
Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance
Targeting is a commonly used, but much debated, policy tool within global social assistance practice. Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance: A New Look at Old Dilemmas examines the well-known dilemmas in light of the growing body of experience, new implementation capacities, and the potential to bring new data and data science to bear. The book begins by considering why or whether or how narrowly or broadly to target different parts of social assistance and updates the global empirics around the outcomes and costs of targeting. It illustrates the choices that must be made in moving from an abstract vision to implementable definitions and procedures, and in deciding how the choices should...
Private transfers, public transfers, and food insecurity during the time of COVID-19: Evidence from Bangladesh
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, interest has grown in what kinds of assistance protect household food security during shocks. We study rural and urban Bangladesh from 2018-19 to late 2021, assessing how pre-pandemic access to social safety net programs and private remittances relate to household food insecurity during the pandemic. Using longitudinal data and estimating differences-in-differences models with household fixed effects, we find that pre-pandemic access to social protection is associated with significant reductions in food insecurity in all rounds collected during the pandemic, particularly in our urban sample. However, pre-pandemic access to remittances shows no similar protective effect.
