TY - JOUR
T1 - Failure vs. displacement
T2 - Why an innovative anti-poverty program showed no net impact in South India
AU - Bauchet, Jonathan
AU - Morduch, Jonathan
AU - Ravi, Shamika
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Swayam Krishi Sangam (SKS), especially Vikram Akula, R. Divakar, M. Rajesh Kumar and the staff in Narayankhed for their collaboration and support. We thank the Ford Foundation for funding. We received particularly helpful comments from Dean Karlan, and from Alexia Latortue, Aude de Montesquiou, Syed Hashemi, and Ravi Jagannathan. We thank Dean Karlan and Josh Dean for inputs into the analysis of measurement problems in the SKS data. We also thank seminar participants at NYU, the Indian School of Business, Nagoya University, the University of Tokyo, and GRIPS-Tokyo, and the conference participants at CGAP (Paris), NEUDC, and the Indian Statistical Institute. Ashwin Ravikumar, Kanika Chawla, Naveen Sunder, Shilpa Rao, Ruchika Mohanty, Monika Engler and Surenderrao Komera provided excellent research assistance. Jonathan Morduch thanks the Center for Economic Institutions in the Institute for Economic Research of Hitotsubashi University for support. A previous version of the paper was circulated under the title “Substitution Bias and External Validity: Why an Innovative Anti-Poverty Program Showed No Net Impact.”
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - We analyze a randomized trial of an innovative anti-poverty program in South India, part of a series of pilot programs that provide "ultra-poor" households with inputs to create new, sustainable livelihoods (often tending livestock). In contrast with results from other pilots, we find no lasting net impact on income or asset accumulation in South India. We explore concerns with program implementation, data errors, and the existence of compelling employment alternatives. The baseline consumption data contain systematic errors, and income and consumption contain large outliers. Steps to address the problems leave the central findings largely intact: Wages for unskilled labor rose sharply in the area while the study was implemented, blunting the net impact of the intervention and highlighting one way that treatment effects depend on factors external to the intervention itself, such as broader employment opportunities.
AB - We analyze a randomized trial of an innovative anti-poverty program in South India, part of a series of pilot programs that provide "ultra-poor" households with inputs to create new, sustainable livelihoods (often tending livestock). In contrast with results from other pilots, we find no lasting net impact on income or asset accumulation in South India. We explore concerns with program implementation, data errors, and the existence of compelling employment alternatives. The baseline consumption data contain systematic errors, and income and consumption contain large outliers. Steps to address the problems leave the central findings largely intact: Wages for unskilled labor rose sharply in the area while the study was implemented, blunting the net impact of the intervention and highlighting one way that treatment effects depend on factors external to the intervention itself, such as broader employment opportunities.
KW - Dropout
KW - External validity
KW - Impact evaluation
KW - India
KW - RCT
KW - Ultrapoor
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.03.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.03.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84927158099
VL - 116
SP - 1
EP - 16
JO - Journal of Development of Economics
JF - Journal of Development of Economics
SN - 0304-3878
ER -