Enabling Sustainable Graduation out of Poverty for the Extreme Poor in Malawi
Core Research Questions
- What is the impact of the gender of the recipient on bargaining power, spousal cohesion and empowerment, intimate partner violence and ultimately welfare (such as income and food security)?
- What is the impact of the ‘Transforming Gender–Power Relations’ (focused on couples) training on these outcomes, when the recipient is female?
Secondary Research Questions
- What is the correlation of social norms on intimate partner violence from the baseline?
- What is the impact of the treatment on intimate partner violence in contexts where different social norms exist?
- Is there a differing impact of this program on households at different poverty levels?
Summary
| Researchers: |
Dr. Michael King, Dr. Tara Bedi and Dr. Julia Vaillant |
| Location: | Malawi |
| Sample: | 3,300 households in Mangochi and Nsanje |
| Timeline: | 2017–2022 |
| Theme: |
Gender equality and poverty |
The Graduation Model is a 'big push' intervention designed to move people out of poverty by addressing the many challenges of extreme poverty by simultaneously boosting livelihoods and income and providing access to financial services. To-date, it represents the most promising intervention to tackle extreme poverty.
While the global commitment to eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere by 2030 (SDG 1.1) is a much welcome step, the scale of the challenge remains daunting. We still have over 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty. As women account for a large portion of the total poor, addressing gender barriers in tackling poverty is essential.
Since 2017, Concern Malawi and Trinity Impact Evaluation (TIME) Unit at Trinity College Dublin are undertaking comprehensive research to estimate the impact of the graduation interventions on gender empowerment and ultimately household welfare as well as whether a gender component enhances the programme outcomes. The aim of this research is to better understand the barriers faced by women in escaping poverty. The three treatment arms are: 1) graduation targeted at females, 2) graduation targeted at males and 3) graduation targeted at females but with an additional couple's empowerment training called ‘Transforming Gender & Power Relations’.
Each intervention arm was delivered to 600 households randomly selected in Mangochi and Nsanje, with 300 households in each district receiving each version of the proposed program. There were an additional 750 households in each district who acted as control households. The Graduation intervention in Malawi was a 20-month intense, multifaceted intervention but the research project was spread over five years to allow for the estimation of medium-term effects.
In order to establish a causal relationship between our three treatment arms and our identified outcomes, this study uses a Randomized Control Trial (RCT). RCT provides a counterfactual, which represents what would have happened in the absence of the interventions, thus providing robust evidence for the efficacy of the intervention examined. To provide evidence into causal drivers of change in selected well being domains for selected households the project will contract BSDR Ltd to conduct a series of Qualitative Impact Protocol (QuIP) studies. These rely on analysis of narrative accounts of drivers change based on respondents’ self-reported attribution. An innovative feature of the QuIP is the use of double blindfolded or programme-neutral interviewing to mitigate confirmation bias.
Between 2017 and 2022, the research followed these households through the implementation of the Graduation programme. All households in this research study were visited at the completion of the Graduation Program and one year after. The results from the research contribute to on-going discussions on Social Protection in Malawi, while at a global level this is the first study in the world to examine the gender dynamics of the graduation model. The results therefore inform a variety of approaches, including those on cash transfers, the graduation process, and approaches to addressing inequality.
The research team is led by the Trinity Impact Evaluation (TIME) research unit and is conducted in partnership with Concern Worldwide. It is supported by researchers from the Gender Innovation Lab at the World Bank. The research team comprises Dr. King, Dr. Ramos Moreno and Dr. Bedi (from the Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin), along with Dr. Goldstein and Dr. Valliant (from the Gender Impact Evaluation team at the World Bank). This research project is funded by Concern Worldwide, and has support from Irish Aid, the Irish Research Council and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 713279.
To apply to access this dataset, please email Dr Michael King.
IPA Conference: Graduation Programme
With commentators suggesting that COVID-19 may have reversed a decade of progress in developing countries, well designed anti-poverty policy remains as urgently needed as ever for the 1.3 billion plus people living in extreme poverty. To-date, the Graduation Program, which aims to build secure, sustainable and resilient livelihoods, represents the most promising intervention to tackle extreme poverty. Impact evaluations show significant effects on household income, even four years after the intervention.
From December 3rd to the 4th, the Trinity Impact Evaluation Unit (TIME) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) held the “New Directions in Graduation Research” virtual conference in partnership with Concern Worldwide and the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab. The conference featured emerging research on how the Graduation affects those pushed into extreme poverty by conflict and climate change, its impacts on gender equality and mental health, how the programs could be varied to improve cost effectiveness, and finally looked at new evidence on long-run program impacts. The event was well-attended by researchers and policy practitioners alike, who were exposed to work at the frontier of the next generation of multi-faceted anti-poverty programs.
Research from the event further strengthen the argument that the Graduation impacts hold across different contexts. Premand and Marguerie’s, Bedoya’s, and Brune’s presentations showed the Graduation Program was able to deliver consistent impacts even in conflict-affected settings in Côte d'Ivoire, Afghanistan, and Uganda.
It highlighted new questions on the Graduation Program and the existence of environmental poverty traps with King’s presentation of evidence from a natural disaster in Malawi (mid-graduation implementation).
In areas such as mental well-being, progress has been made in our understanding of what works. Udry’s presentation on the short-run effects of a group Cognitive Behavioural Therapy intervention in Ghana showed significantly positive effects on mental health, physical health, and performance on cognitive tests.
Within the relationship of gender and Graduation, Bedoya’s presentation showed significant effects of the program on women’s empowerment in Afghanistan. In addition, the event highlighted new work by Concern Worldwide on addressing gender through incorporating empowerment and gender training within the Graduation program.
The work presented at the conference paves the way for a wide range of areas of future research. As more and more evidence of the graduation program’s effectiveness emerges, the conference showed there is still much room for groundbreaking research to explain how and why these interventions work, and to explore their efficacy in a vast array of previously unexplored contexts.
The presentation slides may be accessed here.
The full recorded conference can be accessed here: