Gender Targeting and the Psychosocial and Economic Effects of Livelihood Programs in a Fragile Setting

The South Sudan Productive Safety Net for Socioeconomic Opportunities Project (SNSOP) is a four-year initiative building on prior projects, the South Sudan Safety Net Project (SSSNP) and Safety Net and Skills Development Project (SNSDP), that laid the foundation for South Sudan's safety net system. It consists on two primary components. Component 1 provides direct cash support and public works opportunities, benefiting approximately 96,000 vulnerable households. This public works and direct cash support component is implemented by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which previously implemented the SSSNP and SNSDP. Component 2 focuses on economic opportunities for a subset of Component 1's beneficiaries (youth aged 18 to 35, literate, living in a household with 3 or more dependents who are either minors, elderly, or disabled, or have chronically ill household members). It includes a $250 cash grant and comprises activities such as skills training, coaching, and savings groups to promote productive livelihoods, social cohesion, resilience, and to generate knowledge for future policy and program development. The specific activities to accompany the $250 grant are still pending definition. Approximately 9,000-12,500 households in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, are expected to be selected to benefit from direct support and public works component. The economic opportunities component will allocate resources to support 3,000 of these Juba beneficiaries. Due to the anticipated high interest and oversubscription in the economic opportunities program compared to its financial capacity, beneficiaries in Juba will be selected randomly, ensuring fairness and transparency. The economic opportunities program will be implemented by a third-party that will be contracted by the government in the upcoming months.

2025-06-30

2027-06-30

Food security, consumption, assets and finances, income diversification, women's empowerment.

Food security (household): Food Consumption Score (FCS).
Consumption (household): Food and non-food expenditures.
Asset and finances (household): Household owned assets (value); individual saving accounts, loans (payments and interest rate), participations in saving groups.
Income and businesses (household and individual): Wage employment; household business; farming activities and production; livestock activities and production; non-farm enterprises.
Empowerment and agency (individual): Control of earnings and revenues; control of consumption and production decisions; gender norms Self-efficacy and resilience, sense of control, self- and social-esteem.

Migration, well-being, gender-based violence

Migration (individual): Temporary relocation, permanent migration, remittances.
Well-being (individual): Life satisfaction, psychological distress, health.
Gender-based violence (individual): Actions of physical and/or verbal abuse from partner/husband.

To evaluate the economic opportunities component of SNSOP, we will collaborate with the implementing partner to randomly assign offers to participate in the economic opportunities component, which we will refer to as Treatment. All eligible households will already be participating in the direct support or public works component of SNSOP. The economic opportunities program specifically targets youth aged 18 to 35, who are literate and live in households with three or more dependents, including minors, elderly individuals, disabled persons, or those with chronic illnesses. This impact evaluation will concentrate on the first phase of the economic opportunities program, set to take place in three Payams within South Sudan’s capital, Juba County: Kator, Juba Town, and Munuki. The program aims to treat a total of 3,000 households in these Payams. As per the program’s design, there is an additional requirement of achieving a 1:1 female-to-male ratio, resulting in the selection of 1,500 women and 1,500 men for treatment in Juba.

During registration process for the direct support and public works component, program officers will collect households’ willingness to participate in the program and their priority preferences over the members of the household that are eligible, and they would like to nominate for participation. They will be reminded that nomination does not imply selection and that given program 1:1 ratio there are instances where program will only be offered to men or women. Households will then be individually randomized, with rates of study participation and treatment assignment dependent on household preferences. The sample will be divided into four groups based on the identity of the household members nominated for participation: households with only female or only male were nominated (F or M), and households with multiple nominated members of mixed genders in which households’ preferred participant is a woman (PF) or a man (PM). Household assignment to Treatment vs. Control will be stratified by these four subgroups. To maintain the 1:1 female-to-male overall ratio, treatment ratios will have to vary by subgroups, and household top preferences may not always be followed. Among PM households, treatment households will be randomized to either ‘household preference’ (=male participant) or ‘women targeting’ (=female participant), with a higher proportion of households assigned to treatment in group PM.

While the study participation rates in the four groups will be proportional to the population rates that we will learn once the registration process has been completed, group PM will be oversampled to increase statistical power for the subgroup analysis. However, this oversampling is subject to implementation constraints, and rates may vary across subgroups based on household’s stated preferences and on government partner guidance. While a portion of the PM group may not have their top-ranked household member selected, all program participants will be chosen from the list of members actually nominated by each household. Participants will also be informed during the registration process that their top preference might not be selected, as nomination does not imply selection. This approach should help to alleviate most concerns about potential backlash arising from the program's design.

The evaluation is designed to test the overall effect of household assignment to the treatment condition relative to control as implemented. In addition, the design allows a test of program effects under two different targeting regimes. The first is a traditional women-only targeting under which households can nominate a woman to participate and households without eligible women (group M in our case) are excluded. The second is a household-preference regime under which households can nominate a man to participate and households with only eligible men are included. For the former, we compare treatment and control households among groups F, PF and PM with women targeting; for the latter, we compare treatment and control households among groups F, M, PF and PM with household preference targeting.

Not available

Desk randomization using Stata.

Individual households.

No

6,000 households.

Approximately 30,000 individual household members observations -- we will be collecting a few individual characteristics from household members in 6,000 households (we are assuming an average household size of 5 members)

Control: 2,000 households
Treatment (female beneficiary): 1,500 households
Treatment (male beneficiary): 1,500 households