Broken Promises : Evaluating an Incomplete Cash Transfer Program
Interventions in highly insecure and fragile contexts are always confronted with the latent risk of not being able to implement the program as intended. Despite its high policy relevance, little is known about the impacts of program disruption or c...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/282001568644679290/Broken-Promises-Evaluating-an-Incomplete-Cash-Transfer-Program http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32424 |
| Summary: | Interventions in highly insecure and
fragile contexts are always confronted with the latent risk
of not being able to implement the program as intended.
Despite its high policy relevance, little is known about the
impacts of program disruption or cancellation on
beneficiaries. This study uses the unplanned cancellation of
the South Sudan Youth Business Start-Up Grant Program to
assess the socioeconomic, behavioral, and psychological
consequences of a program that fails to be implemented as
intended. Originally planned as a randomized trial, the
Youth Startup Business Grant Program consisted of an
unconditional cash grant combined with a business and life
skills training targeting the youth in South Sudan. Due to
the intensification of violence in the country, the
disbursement of the grant was terminated in late 2016 before
most of the intended beneficiaries had accessed the grant.
The study uses survey data from face-to-face interviews and
experimental data from lotteries, trust games, and a list
experiment to assess the consequences of the cancellation in
a comprehensive form. The empirical analysis employs
instrumental variable regressions to control for individual
characteristics that might have made it more likely to
access the grant before disbursement was frozen. The results
show that participants who received the originally planned
treatment displayed significant improvements in their
consumption, savings, and psychological well-being. However,
participants who vainly expected to receive the cash grant
showed reduced levels of consumption and women among this
subgroup also experienced strong reductions in their trust
level. In addition, the study finds some evidence that these
women were less likely to migrate. |
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