Natasha Reese, MPP 2014
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, DC
THIS SUMMER, I interned at the International Food Policy Research Institute—a policy think tank that specializes in “sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty.” They do a lot of program analysis for the World Bank. My summer project was to evaluate an innovative poverty reduction model in Tanzania that the Bank launched in 2011. The program is the first time a conditional cash transfer (CCT) was combined with a community-driven development (CDD) framework.
CCTs are welfare programs that are conditional upon receivers’ actions. For example, the program I evaluated requires that all participating households meet the following education and health conditionalities:
- All children age 7-15 must attend school, with a minimum 80% attendance rate.
- All children age 0-5 must visit a health facility three times a year.
- Elderly household members (60+ years) must visit a health facility once a year.
CCTs represent a more holistic approach to poverty reduction: They aim to reduce short-term poverty with direct cash transfers, while also fighting long-term poverty by increasing human capital among the poor. CCTs have had major successes, such as in Brazil where the Bolsa program saw poverty rates fall by 27.7% among involved households.
Poverty down 27%
Conditional cash transfers have had major successes, such as in Brazil, where the Bolsa program saw poverty rates fall by 27.7%.
In the CCD framework, the poor are treated as partners in the development process. The model was developed in the 1990s when it became clear that the socio-political complexities of the field made topdown, state-led big development strategies ineffective. CCD initiatives give control of the development process, resources, and decision making to a community group. The underlying assumption is that communities are the best judges of how their lives and livelihoods can be improved, rather than an international group coming and saying, “we’re going to do this with the funds.” CCDs also offer the added benefit (at times) of ripple effects that include promoting equity, inclusiveness, efficiency, and good governance.
The project I helped evaluate represents the first time this combo-model has been tried, anywhere. So far the program has been evaluated at the baseline and midline (18 months after implementation) and I worked on the endline evaluation. We saw some exciting improvements.
It’s remarkable how much Batten-knowledge I used. My project, at times, felt like “Introduction to Policy Analysis (IPA) II: The Eightfold Path Never Ends.” And I’ve now logged my 217th hour in Stata where I have been using instrumental variables. While our first year was challenging and produced a few grey hairs, it feels good to look back and realize that all that preparation has now allowed me to be entrusted with interesting and meaningful work.