Intervention Size and Persistence

Florence Kondylis and John Ashton Loeser

No 9769, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Do larger interventions improve longer run outcomes more cost effectively And should poverty traps motivate increasing intervention size This paper considers two approaches to increasing intervention size in the context of temporary unconditional cash transfers — larger transfers (intensity), and adding complementary graduation program interventions (scope). It does so leveraging 38 experimental estimates of dynamic consumption impacts from 14 developing countries. First, increasing intensity decreases cost effectiveness and does not affect persistence of impacts. This result can be explained by poverty traps or decreasing marginal return on investment in a standard buffer stock model. Second, increasing scope increases impacts and persistence, but reduces cost effectiveness at commonly evaluated time horizons and increases heterogeneity. In summary, larger interventions need not have more persistent impacts, and when they do, this may come at the expense of cost effectiveness, and poverty traps are neither necessary nor sufficient for these results.

Keywords: Disability; Economic Assistance; Access of Poor to Social Services; Services & Transfers to Poor; Inequality; Poverty Assessment; Poverty Impact Evaluation; Poverty Lines; Poverty Monitoring & Analysis; Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping; Poverty Diagnostics; School Health; Education for Development (superceded); Nutrition; Education For All; Early Child and Children's Health; Public Health Promotion; Reproductive Health; Disease Control & Prevention; Educational Populations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09-08
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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