BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) programme, introduced in 2002, aims to support people out of extreme poverty. The programme has been modified over the years, offering grants, credit, and a savings match to incentivize savings behaviour and improve resilience. It also aimed to enable participants to access financial services. To assess the effectiveness of the newly-designed UPG, researchers from the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Northwestern University, University of Maryland, and Yale University have teamed up to conduct an impact evaluation, using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on the 2019 UPG cohort. The study inspires the question of what should be the balance between the programme efforts for economic and social empowerment, how to improve the latter, and how to measure it well. It reveals a significant positive impact of the programme on savings, loans, and social empowerment among participants in Uganda. The social empowerment pillar of the programme, which includes community mobilization and coaching, aimed to increase women’s household-level decision-making power and confidence. However, the study found mixed results on household-level decision-making, with fewer women in both treatment and control households reporting influence on decisions. The study suggests further variations of assets/loans to address intergroup inequality.
Authors: Jahan, Nusrat; Mozumder, Tanvir Ahmed; Hsu, Sam; Arman, Md. Raied; Arif, Akmam Binte
Type: Report
Year: 2023
