The project, titled ‘Gender Focused Multi-Faceted Anti-Poverty Programs: Low-Cost Options for Scale-up’, will be led by Dr Michael King and Dr Tara Bedi, in partnership with Village Enterprise. Dr Michael King is an Assistant Professor in Economics at Trinity College Dublin and Dr Tara Bedi is an Assistant Professor in Geography at Trinity College Dublin. King and Bedi are both members of TIME (Trinity IMpact Evaluation Unit).
The study will examine whether adding gender empowerment, household cooperation and relationship training to a low-cost Graduation programme can improve women’s agency, household decision-making and economic outcomes.
The research will build on earlier experimental evidence from Malawi and will test whether similar impacts can be achieved in a different setting and at lower implementation cost. The study will generate evidence for policymakers and development practitioners on how anti-poverty programmes can be designed to better support women’s economic empowerment, household cooperation and cost-effective scale-up.
The funding was awarded by Innovation for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Gates Foundation.