Social protection and sustainable poverty reduction: Experimental evidence from Bangladesh

Akhter Ahmed (), Melissa Hidrobo, John Hoddinott, Bastien Koch, Shalini Roy and Salauddin Tauseef

No 1988, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Social protection programs are primarily focused on influencing household behavior in the short term, increasing consumption to reduce poverty and food insecurity, and promoting investments in human capital. A large body of evidence across numerous settings shows that cash and food transfer programs are highly effective in doing so. However, there is growing interest in understanding the extent to which such programs can help households stay out of poverty in the longer term, specifically after transfers end. We bring new evidence to this question, re-interviewing Bangladeshi households that participated in a well-implemented randomized social protection intervention four years after it ended. We find that combining transfers, either cash or food, with behavior change communication activities sustainably reduced poverty. Cash transfers alone had sustainable effects, but these were context-specific. The beneficial impacts of food transfers did not persist four years after the intervention finished.

Keywords: poverty alleviation; households; social protection; food assistance; sustainability; nutrition; food security; cash transfers; poverty; food aid; poverty reduction; Bangladesh; Southern Asia; Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/143574

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1988

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().