The Malawi Social Cash Transfer (SCT) scheme is part of a wave of social protection programmes providing cash to poor households in order to reduce poverty and hunger and promote child education and health. This paper looks beyond the protective function of such programmes, analysing their...

Evaluating the impact of poverty-reduction programs on fertility is complicated given that changes in incentives to have children take time to be incorporated into decision making and evaluation periods are usually quite brief. We explore the use of birth spacing as a short-run indicator of the...

The paper presents an analysis of the role of two forms of social capital — linking and bonding — on two key farm outcomes: on-farm crop diversity and household well-being. Where market transactions are limited, social capital is an important household asset for accessing seed and...

Using data from Bolivia, this paper analyzes seed market participation and how transaction costs in these markets influence intracrop biodiversity and the influence of biodiversity on yields. Results indicate that seed market attributes such as distance and market-level biodiversity have a...

In poverty reduction programs, a significant number of beneficiaries change program status. An analysis of Oportunidades' data from urban Mexico shows that beneficiaries that drop out for behavioral and administrative reasons are those who are marginally eligible, improving targeting through...

Assessing impact requires attribution, which refers to the ability to claim that impact on an indicator of success is the result of a particular investment. Identifying impact entails creating a counterfactual that allows comparison of what has happened as the results of an intervention and what...

This paper investigates the multiple effects of increased land tenure security on rural people through a systematic review of the available evidence. The research involves collecting and synthesising the robust quantitative and qualitative research around this topic and is guided by a theory of...

This paper challenges the traditional view that portrays income maximization as the main driver of migration and tests whether relative deprivation and social inequality lead to migration in sub-Saharan Africa. Examining data from the Living Standards Measurements Study – Integrated Surveys in...

This paper investigates the trends and the influencing factors of IFAD's project disbursement performance over the past 20 years. Based on data from 577 projects in 111 countries, the study finds that disbursement of funds are often delayed and time-consuming. Using econometric analysis, the...

This paper uses data from the General Household Survey Panel 2010/11 to analyze differences in agricultural productivity across male and female plot managers in Nigeria. The analysis utilizes the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, which allows for decomposing the unconditional gender gap into...