Studies Archive - BRAC Institute of Governance and Development

The Impact of BRAC’s Integrated Development Programme on the Livelihoods of Char Communities

This study assesses the impact of BRAC Integrated Development Programme’s interventions in the chars using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) approach.

Researcher: Proloy Barua; Md. Karimul Islam; Md. Shakil Ahmed; Narayan C. Das

Partners: BRAC Integrated Development Programme, BRAC

Timeline: 2024-2027

Status: Ongoing

Contact: Md. Karimul Islam; Karimul.islam@bracu.ac.bd

Context

Chars are dynamic landforms shaped by Bangladesh’s extensive river systems, covering approximately 8% of the country’s landmass. These regions are remote and highly vulnerable to natural hazards, such as flooding and riverbank erosion. The estimated char population of 20 million people faces limited economic opportunities and restricted access to essential services. The region suffers from inadequate infrastructure, including poor road networks, healthcare facilities, markets, financial institutions, limited government services, and scarce employment opportunities, resulting in high poverty rates. BRAC Integrated Development Programme (IDP) has designed a suite of targeted livelihood interventions to improve the lives and livelihoods of char residents. To assess the impact of IDP interventions in the chars, the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) has developed a study using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) approach.

Objective

The primary objective of the baseline survey was to identify the specific service needs of the vulnerable char population, informing the design of targeted interventions. Additionally, the baseline survey can serve as a benchmark for assessing the impact of future interventions by BRAC IDP. The ultimate objective is to evaluate the impact of the BRAC IDP’s intervention on the lives and livelihoods of the Char households.

Methodology

To evaluate the impact of IDP on program households in char areas, BIGD conducted a cluster RCT in selected chars. BRAC IDP initially provided BIGD with a list of 158 chars selected for program intervention. In consultation with the program and based on feasibility considerations, 90 potential chars from the initial 158 were shortlisted for the study. Out of these 90 chars, 60 were randomly assigned to the treatment group, while the remaining 30 chars served as the control group.

Publication

Report | Lives and Livelihoods of Char Dwellers: Findings from a Baseline Survey in Selected Char in Northern Bangladesh

Findings and Recommendations

Recommendations from a baseline report on the study is given below.

Addressing the challenges in char areas requires targeted interventions across multiple sectors. For the younger population, investments in healthcare and education are essential to developing human capital. To reduce child labour, comprehensive strategies focused on employment generation, income diversification, and child protection are necessary. Enhancing livestock productivity through the wider adoption of artificial insemination can bolster economic resilience. Households, especially those led by women, need improved access to financial services. Increasing household savings and promoting mobile financial services (MFS) among women would help to enhance financial inclusion. Expanding social safety net coverage in char areas is crucial to supporting vulnerable households. Improving market access and addressing land constraints will be vital to boosting agricultural productivity and income. Initiatives to reduce the high rate of child marriage are also essential, given its prevalence in chars. Improved maternal healthcare services, particularly for antenatal and postnatal care, are urgently needed. Increasing awareness and access to sanitary pads is vital for women’s menstrual health.

Finally, implementing robust DRM strategies, including better coping mechanisms such as financial support, is critical to mitigating the impacts of floods, river erosion,
and economic shocks.

Neuroimaging for Care Evaluation

Neurodevelopmental benefits of childcare are rarely captured in policy-relevant research due to methodological and logistical constraints. This study addresses that gap by embedding neuroimaging within a large-scale evaluation.

Researchers: Munshi Sulaiman, PhD; Shaila Ahmed, PhD; Sakila Yesmin; Diva Dhar; Anandi Mani; Seon Deoni; Raisa Adiba; Aloka Ahmed Oishy

Partners: BRAC Institute of Educational Development (BRAC IED); ICDDR, B; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)

Timeline: 2023-2026

Status: Ongoing

Contact: raisa.adiba@bracu.ac.bd

Context

While evidence increasingly links quality childcare to improved child development and women’s labour force participation, little is known about its effects on early brain development, particularly in low-income, urban contexts. Neurodevelopmental impacts remain a “hidden benefit” of childcare and are rarely measured in policy-relevant studies due to methodological and logistical constraints. This study embeds neuroimaging within a large childcare evaluation to bridge that evidence gap.

Objective

The purpose of this study is to examine how access to quality childcare influences early brain development and neurocognitive outcomes among young children, generating biological and behavioural evidence on the developmental benefits of childcare beyond standard child development indicators.

Methodology

This neuroimaging sub-study is part of the Gates-funded Deepening Evidence to Action on Childcare and Capital Levers project. Using portable MRI (Hyperfine Swoop), it examines brain structure and neurocognitive outcomes among children aged 0–4 years. A case-control design compares childcare users with age- and gender-matched non-users from the same clusters across Dhaka, Tongi, Savar, and Gazipur. Neuroimaging outcomes are complemented by standardized developmental assessments (GSED, IDELA) and qualitative evidence on caregiving practices.

Findings and Recommendations

Forthcoming.

Making it Easier to Pay for School: The Impact of Digitization of Tuition Payments on Student Performance in Benin

Motivation

In Benin, secondary school tuition payments impose substantial financial strain on households, often leading to late or incomplete payments that result in students being sent home or barred from exams. These disruptions are especially consequential for girls, whose education is frequently deprioritized when resources are scarce. Many parents rely on continuous saving to pay school fees, reflecting irregular income streams and the need to accumulate small amounts over time. However, these savings are vulnerable to competing household needs—such as food, health expenses, or transportation—which can divert funds intended for future tuition installments and generate repeated payment delays and school absences. This study addresses these barriers by introducing a mobile money–based tuition payment system delivered through an ed-tech application, implemented in partnership with Revelateur Benin SA. The platform allows parents to monitor their child’s academic progress and behavior while enabling small, incremental tuition payments to be made digitally and directly to schools. Schools are also encouraged to accept incremental payments on site for parents who prefer not to use the application. By facilitating frequent, low-value payments and reducing the risk that earmarked tuition funds are absorbed by competing needs, the intervention aims to ease liquidity constraints, reduce payment delays, limit school absences, and improve educational outcomes—particularly for girls at greater risk of dropout during periods of financial stress.

Objective

The study examines whether digitizing tuition payments improves parents’ ability to pay school fees on time and in full, and whether these effects translate into better attendance and academic performance—especially for girls, whose schooling is often more vulnerable to financial shocks. A central question is whether flexible, incremental mobile payments disproportionately benefit girls. We will conduct a randomized controlled trial across 50 low-cost private secondary schools in Benin’s Atlantique, Zou, and Ouémé regions, focusing on students in Grades 9 and 10. For one academic year, access to the SuccesSco ed-tech application will be subsidized in all participating schools. Schools will be randomly assigned to treatment or control. In the 25 treatment schools, parents will receive full access to SuccesSco, including parental engagement features and the ability to make small, incremental tuition payments directly to schools. In the 25 control schools, parents will access the parental engagement features only, with tuition continuing to be paid through existing in-person methods. The evaluation combines school administrative data on payments, attendance, and academic performance with transaction-level data from SuccesSco and parent surveys, allowing us to assess both behavioral responses to digital payments and downstream effects on student outcomes and household financial stress.

Proposed impact

This research will generate actionable evidence for policymakers, educators, and financial service providers on whether mobile money can reduce financial barriers to secondary education and improve student outcomes. For implementers, the findings will inform the design of scalable school finance systems that lower administrative burdens, improve revenue collection, and reduce classroom disruptions caused by unpaid fees. By explicitly examining gender-differentiated impacts, the study will also contribute to strategies aimed at safeguarding girls’ education during periods of financial strain. For researchers, the project advances the literature on financial inclusion by linking digital payment innovations to concrete education outcomes, rather than access alone. If successful, the intervention offers a replicable model for using digital finance to support education financing in resource-constrained settings across Sub-Saharan Africa and similar contexts.

Photo by Camille KOSSOKO

Overview

Status: Ongoing

Associated Institute: Dartmouth College

Associated Investigators: Mahounan Yedomiffi (Dartmouth College); Leora Klapper (World Bank) and Owen Ozier (Williams College)

Country: Benin

Implementation Partners: Revelateur Benin SA, Federation of Private Schools of Benin, Kemt Center for Development

WEE-DiFine thematic areas: access to finance, opportunity cost of time, velocity of transfers and breadth of support network

Measuring Impact of Group Loans and Savings Group Digital Ledgers in Savings Groups on Women’s Economic Empowerment

Motivation

Savings groups play a central role in expanding financial access across Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly for women, but many remain constrained by limited capital and time-intensive, paper-based operations. Group-based loans have the potential to relax capital constraints, while digital ledgers may improve efficiency, accuracy, and links to formal finance. Because women make up most savings group members, these innovations may also reshape women’s economic empowerment (WEE). Yet existing evidence offers limited causal insight into how group loans and digitized recordkeeping affect women’s agency, financial autonomy, and intra-group dynamics. This study addresses that gap by examining whether and through which channels these financial and digital innovations translate into meaningful gains in women’s empowerment.

Objective

This study builds on a randomized controlled trial in Uganda and Malawi that evaluates two interventions: (1) FAST group loans, offered by VisionFund and disbursed via mobile money, and (2) DreamSave digital ledgers, a smartphone application that digitizes group recordkeeping. Savings groups are cross-randomized into four arms—FAST only, DreamSave only, both interventions, and a control group—covering 167 groups in Uganda and 144 in Malawi and over 2,400 individuals. The study measures impacts on financial inclusion, enterprise activity, consumption, and savings, with a core focus on women’s economic empowerment. Key WEE outcomes include financial privacy, decision-making power, resource autonomy, time use, confidence, and social cohesion. A mixed-methods design combining surveys, administrative data, and qualitative interviews enables the study to identify underlying mechanisms and trade-offs, such as whether improved access to credit strengthens women’s bargaining power or alters group cohesion. The analysis is anchored in the CGAP–IPA WEE measurement framework, ensuring systematic and comparable measurement of empowerment outcomes.

Proposed Impact

The project will generate rigorous evidence on whether and how linking savings groups to formal credit and digitizing their operations can advance women’s economic empowerment. Findings will directly inform program design and scale-up decisions for implementers such as World Vision, VisionFund, and DreamStart Labs, and will be highly relevant for donors and governments promoting group-based financial inclusion. If effective, these interventions could be scaled across World Vision’s multi-country THRIVE platform. More broadly, the study contributes to the academic and policy literature by clarifying how mechanisms such as privacy, transaction costs, bargaining power, and social cohesion mediate the relationship between digital finance and women’s empowerment, while piloting a standardized WEE measurement framework in the savings group context.

Photo by Mugabi Owen on Unsplash

Overview

Status: Ongoing

Associated Institute: Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

Associated Investigators: Celine Wuyts (IPA) and Alfredo Burlando (University of Oregon); Jessica Goldberg (University of Maryland); William Blackmon (IPA); Emmanuel Tumusiime (World Vision USA)

Country: Uganda and Malawi

Implementation Partners: World Vision Inc.; VisionFund; DreamStart Labs

WEE-DiFine thematic areas: privacy, transaction costs, bargaining power, confidence, and social cohesion

Truly Empowered, She Has Become? Long-Term Impact of Smartphone Ownership on Women’s Empowerment in Rural India

Motivation

Despite growing access to mobile technology, women in rural India continue to face significant gaps in smartphone ownership, digital skills, and control over digital resources. Much of the existing evidence on the relationship between mobile phone access and women’s empowerment is correlational, making it difficult to determine whether observed outcomes reflect causal effects. Moreover, empowerment outcomes often unfold gradually, shaped by household norms, bargaining power, and sustained engagement with digital tools. This study addresses these gaps by generating causal evidence on the impact of women’s smartphone access on empowerment. Moreover, the study examines the extent to which early impacts persist, grow, or fade over time, and how women actually use smartphones when given sustained access.

Objective

This study builds on an ongoing randomized controlled trial in rural Uttar Pradesh that examines the impact of internet-enabled smartphone ownership, combined with structured and adaptive digital training, on women’s agency and economic participation. The second endline will capture longer-term impacts on empowerment, labor market participation, and gender attitudes. The study uses a village-level randomized controlled trial with women assigned to one of three groups: a smartphone-only group, a smartphone-plus-digital-training group, and a control group. Key outcomes include women’s empowerment, intrahousehold bargaining power, digital financial service use, health and hygiene, and multi-dimensional poverty. In addition, the study collects monthly high-frequency data on smartphone usage, app engagement, confidence in device usage, and time use,. Lastly, in-depth interviews with women demonstrating high and low levels of digital engagement will explore mechanisms, constraints, and contextual factors shaping empowerment outcomes.

Proposed impact

This research will generate rigorous causal evidence on the long-term effects of smartphone ownership and digital training on women’s empowerment in low-income rural settings. By combining quantitative outcomes, high-frequency behavioral data, and qualitative insights, the study will help clarify whether digital access alone is sufficient to improve empowerment outcomes, or whether structured, adaptive digital content is necessary to sustain impact. The findings will be relevant for policymakers, implementers, and researchers designing interventions to advance women’s digital inclusion, agency, and decision-making power. More broadly, the study will generate policy-relevant insights into the conditions under which digital connectivity can translate into meaningful empowerment for women.

Overview

Status: Ongoing

Associated Institute: International Foundation for Research and Education (IFRE), Ashoka University

Associated Investigators: Shagata Mukherjee, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC), Ashoka University; Sharon Barnhardt, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC), Ashoka University

Country: India

Implementation Partners: NYAS Research and Development

WEE-Connect thematic areas: Access to digital technology, digital literacy, Adoption and use of digital financial services, access to health-related information.

Empowering Women Workers: Employer enabled Digital Financial Services with Budgeting Tool

Motivation

Women workers in India’s garment sector often earn regular wages. Yet many remain financially vulnerable due to limited access to flexible liquidity, formal credit, and secure savings, compounded by social pressures that constrain financial control. Unexpected expenses, rigid pay cycles, lack of access to formal credit systems, and reliance on informal borrowing contribute to financial stress and constrain women’s economic agency. Employer-enabled digital financial services (DFS) offer a promising way to address these challenges by embedding financial access within the workplace, including through products such as earned wage access (EWA), which can ease short-term liquidity constraints. Beyond immediate liquidity relief, EWA may also serve as a stepping stone to greater engagement with digital credit by reducing dependence on informal borrowing, building familiarity with formal financial tools, and facilitating creditworthiness. Understanding whether and how such employer-enabled pathways translate into deeper financial engagement and improved financial well-being is critical, given the growing use of these fintech tools in developing economies.

Objective

The study examines whether access to employer-enabled digital financial tools, such as earned wage access (EWA) and digital credit, improves workers’ financial behavior, financial well-being, and women’s economic empowerment, and whether additional financial management tools strengthen these effects. Specifically, it asks how access to wage-linked liquidity and digital credit facilitate financial deepening by enabling workers to transition away from informal borrowing toward greater engagement with formal credit, stronger financial resilience, and women’s enhanced participation in household financial decision-making. The research team will implement an individual-level randomized controlled trial with approximately 1,800 garment workers (the majority women) employed in three factories operated by Shahi Exports in Karnataka, India. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of four groups: 1) Access to Digital Credit only, 2) Access to EWA and Digital Credit, 3) Access to EWA and Digital Credit along with a Financial Diaries application, or 4) business as usual. The study will employ survey data, high frequency data, and administrative records on product use and workplace outcomes, enabling analysis of overall impacts as well as underlying mechanisms.

Proposed Impact
This research will generate policy-relevant evidence on how employer-enabled digital financial services bundling of EWA and digital credit, along with financial management tools, affect women workers’ financial well-being and economic empowerment. The findings will inform the design of inclusive, scalable financial wellness programs that improve financial deepening and resilience without increasing debt stress or undermining agency. For employers and fintech providers, the study will offer guidance on how workplace-based DFS can enhance worker well-being while also improving attendance, retention, and productivity, without requiring firms to bear financial or regulatory risk. For policymakers and practitioners, the results will shed light on how voluntary, bundled digital finance can support women’s empowerment in formal labor markets, contributing to broader debates on financial inclusion, workplace intermediation, and gender-equitable economic growth.

Photo credit: Eugene Nelmin on Unsplash

Overview

Status: Ongoing

Associated Institute: Good Business Lab

Associated Investigators: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Good Business Lab and University of California San Diego; Anant Nyshadham, Good Business Lab and University of Michigan; Sowmya Dhanaraj, Good Business Lab; Smit Gade; Good Business Lab

Country: India

Implementation Partners: Shahi Exports Pvt. Ltd

WEE-DiFine thematic areas: access to finance, bargaining power, ability to enact preferences

Bridging the Gendered Digital Connectivity Divide to Empower Women Elected Representatives and Their Constituents

Motivation
India has institutionalized the largest, most progressive electoral gender quota in the world, yet elected women representatives (EWRs) continue to face substantial and persistent barriers to their political power. Evidence shows that most quota-elected representatives defer political authority to male relatives, a practice commonly referred to as “proxyism.” At the same time, large gender gaps in digital connectivity persist: many EWRs in rural India do not own mobile phones, limiting their access to information, networks, and constituents. Digital connectivity is increasingly essential for political participation, governance, and leadership effectiveness, yet remains unevenly distributed along gender lines. Emerging evidence suggests that mobile phone ownership may be closely linked to women leaders’ ability to act autonomously and perform their official duties. This study examines how digital access interacts with interventions designed to strengthen EWRs’ agency, with the broader goal of understanding how improving women’s digital connectivity can enhance political representation, service delivery, and downstream social and economic outcomes for women and their communities.

Objective

This research builds on an ongoing evaluation of three interventions aimed at strengthening the agency of women elected representatives: (i) an agency- and capacity-building training program to enhance EWRs’ leadership and technical skills, (ii) the formation of peer networks for EWRs, and (iii) community engagement forums that connect EWRs with women constituents. The proposed study adds a qualitative research initiative to examine how mobile phone ownership and digital connectivity shape the effectiveness of these interventions.

Through repeated in-depth interviews with EWRs across all treatment arms, this study investigates how access to mobile phones affects women leaders’ information access, political networks, decision-making authority, and interactions with constituents. This research further explores whether expanding EWRs’ digital connectivity can mitigate proxyism and amplify women’s authority within local governance structures. By tracing these mechanisms over time, this study aims to clarify how digital agency enhances institutional and social interventions to strengthen women’s political, social, and economic empowerment.

Proposed Impact

This study will generate policy-relevant insights into how digital inclusion can reinforce women’s political agency in contexts where formal representation does not guarantee real power. Findings will inform central and state governments, civil society organizations, and development practitioners on the importance of integrating digital access into governance and leadership programs for women. By highlighting how mobile phone ownership enhances the effectiveness of agency-building interventions, this research will guide scalable strategies to reduce proxyism, improve service delivery, and strengthen women’s representation in local decision-making. More broadly, the study contributes to evidence on how women’s political empowerment—enabled by digital connectivity—can translate into wider social and economic gains for rural Indian communities.

Photo credit: Jennifer Deacon on Unsplash

Overview

Status: Ongoing

Associated Institute: Inclusion Economics India Centre (IEIC), Stanford University, and IIT Gandhinagar

Associated Investigators: Soledad Prillaman, Stanford University; Deepak Singhania, IIT Gandhinagar; Alba Huidobro, Stanford University

Country: India

Implementation Partners: Transform Rural India (TRI), Inclusion Economics India Centre (IEIC)

WEE-Connect thematic areas: digital literacy, intra-household norms, and bargaining power