Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice, World Bank, Washington DC, USA.
Africa Gender Innovation Lab, World Bank, Washington DC, USA.
Nature. 2022 May;605(7909):291-297. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04647-8. Epub 2022 Apr 27.
Many policies attempt to help extremely poor households build sustainable sources of income. Although economic interventions have predominated historically, psychosocial support has attracted substantial interest, particularly for its potential cost-effectiveness. Recent evidence has shown that multi-faceted 'graduation' programmes can succeed in generating sustained changes. Here we show that a multi-faceted intervention can open pathways out of extreme poverty by relaxing capital and psychosocial constraints. We conducted a four-arm randomized evaluation among extremely poor female beneficiaries already enrolled in a national cash transfer government programme in Niger. The three treatment arms included group savings promotion, coaching and entrepreneurship training, and then added either a lump-sum cash grant, psychosocial interventions, or both the cash grant and psychosocial interventions. All three arms generated positive effects on economic outcomes and psychosocial well-being, but there were notable differences in the pathways and the timing of effects. Overall, the arms with psychosocial interventions were the most cost-effective, highlighting the value of including well-designed psychosocial components in government-led multi-faceted interventions for the extreme poor.
许多政策旨在帮助赤贫家庭建立可持续的收入来源。尽管经济干预措施在历史上占据主导地位，但心理社会支持引起了广泛关注，尤其是因为它具有潜在的成本效益。最近的证据表明，多方面的“毕业”计划可以成功地带来持续的变化。在这里，我们表明，通过放宽资本和心理社会限制，多方面的干预可以为摆脱赤贫开辟途径。我们在尼日尔对已经参加国家现金转移政府计划的极度贫困女性受益人进行了一项四臂随机评估。三个治疗组包括团体储蓄推广、辅导和创业培训，然后分别增加一次性现金赠款、心理社会干预，或现金赠款和心理社会干预两者都有。所有三个组都对经济结果和心理社会幸福感产生了积极影响，但在途径和效果的时间上存在显著差异。总体而言，有心理社会干预的组最具成本效益，突出了在政府主导的多方面针对赤贫人群的干预措施中纳入精心设计的心理社会组成部分的价值。
