With more than one-fifth of Bangladesh’s population living in extreme poverty, surmounting it still remains a substantial predicament for development practitioners. To combat this issue, BRAC initiated the multifaceted Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction program with a grant-based approach, reinforcing its efficacy with background services such as health and social development. Using propensity score matching, this paper analyses a three-round panel data-set (2002–2005–2008) to evaluate the impacts of the program. It was found that Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction is successfully able to increase the per-capita income, the productive asset bases and the overall food security of its participants in the long run. An important finding is that, over time, the amount of average informal loans of the participant households appears to be decreasing due to the intervention. However, the programme had an impact in increasing amount of loans from formal financial institutions but this is decreasing over time.
Authors: Raza, Wameq A; Das, Narayan C; Misha, Farzana A
Type: Journal Article
Year: 2012
