Evaluation of Cash-only and Cash-Plus Programs in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda

Last registered on April 30, 2025

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Evaluation of Cash-only and Cash-Plus Programs in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015824
Initial registration date
April 24, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 30, 2025, 9:16 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Mathematica

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-07-01
End date
2027-12-31
Secondary IDs
MUREC-2025-788
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The non-profit organization GiveDirectly plans to implement a cash-plus program in Nakivale refugee settlement, which will supplement a large unconditional cash transfer with demand-driven skills training and apprenticeship; business coaching, mentoring, and entrepreneurship support; and access to financial services and financial literacy training. GiveDirectly has contracted with Mathematica to conduct a
randomized controlled trial to rigorously assess the impact of the cash-plus program on wellbeing. To conduct the study, we propose to randomly assign 1,950 refugee households to one of three experimental conditions: (1) cash-only treatment, in which refugee households are provided with a cash transfer; (2) cash-plus treatment, in which refugee households are provided with a cash transfer and an offer to participate in complementary interventions; and (3) control, in which refugee households will receive a cash transfer at the end of the study (after two years). We will conduct a household survey with each of these groups at baseline (July 2025) and two years later (July 2027). Comparing the outcomes of refugee households in the treatment conditions to those in the control condition will quantify the causal impact of the cash-only and cash-plus programs. Meanwhile, comparing outcomes between the two treatment conditions will quantify the value added by the complementary intervention to the standard cash transfer.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Borkum, Evan. 2025. "Evaluation of Cash-only and Cash-Plus Programs in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda." AEA RCT Registry. April 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15824-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
GiveDirectly, in collaboration with COVOID, a local NGO, plans to implement a cash-plus program in addition to its standard cash-only program in Nakivale settlement. Refugee households and host community households will receive transfers of about US$1,000, while an additional group of refugee households will receive the same transfer together with access to the complementary interventions, depending on their needs and interest.

Complementary interventions will be designed to empower cash recipients to increase the long-term household and community benefits of the cash they receive. These interventions will comprise three components:
1. Demand-driven skills training and apprenticeship tailored to identified beneficiaries,
2. Business coaching, mentoring, and entrepreneurship support to enhance income-generating potential, and
3. Access to financial services through Village Savings and Loan Associations, combined with financial literacy training to promote economic resilience.
Intervention Start Date
2025-09-01
Intervention End Date
2027-07-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Household owns a non-agricultural business
Monthly household non-agricultural business profit
Monthly household consumption expenditure
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Monthly household non-agricultural business profit: Sum of revenue from all non-agricultural businesses owned by the household in the last month minus operating costs from all non-agricultural businesses owned by the household in the last month.

Monthly household consumption expenditure: Sum of the following:
1. Household expenditure in the last 7 days on 19 different food items, alcohol, and tobacco, multiplied by 4.3 to convert into monthly expenditure.
2. Household expenditure in the last 30 days on 6 different personal care items and services, 5 different fuel and utilities expenses, 5 different health and medical care related expenses, 4 different transportation expenses, and 3 different entertainment and gambling expenses.
3. Household expenditure in the last 12 months on 5 different types of financial transfers, 3 different types of education expenses, 5 different housing investments, 7 different personal/household assets, and 2 social/religious expenses, divided by 12 to convert into monthly expenditure.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Value of productive assets owned by household
Wealth index
Monthly household non-agricultural business revenue
Total monthly household revenue
Total monthly household profit
Total monthly household income
Any household members currently temporarily migrated outside Nakivale
Any household members permanently migrated outside Nakivale in the past 2 years
Household exhibits stress coping strategies (stress_coping)
Household exhibits crisis coping strategies (crisis_coping)
Household exhibits emergency coping strategies (emergency_coping)
Livelihoods coping strategies index
Household food insecurity score
Current household debt
Current household savings
All school-aged children in household are currently enrolled in school
All school-aged girls in household are currently enrolled in school
All children in the household who are enrolled in school attended at least 75% of school days in the past week
All girls in the household who are enrolled in school attended at least 75% of school days in the past week
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Value of productive assets owned by household: Sum of the self-reported value of: Livestock; Agricultural assets (farm tools/equipment, seeds or seedlings, wheelbarrows/hand carts); Stall used for business or income-generating purposes; Current business stock on hand; Household assets used for business or income-generating purposes (stove, refrigerator, cookware/pots, sewing machine, iron, hairdryer, washing machine, table, desk, bench, chair, sofa, generator, solar panel); Means of transportation used for business or income-generating purposes (bicycle, motorcycle or scooter, animal-drawn cart, car, truck, boat, canoe); Electronics used for business or income-generating purposes (computer or tablet, television, radio, mobile phone)

Wealth index: Our approach follows the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) wealth index construction. This is constructed based on the first principal component of a principal components analysis (PCA) based on assets and living conditions, which we will normalize relative to the control distribution at baseline. The assets and living conditions included largely follow the 2016 Uganda DHS.

Monthly household non-agricultural business revenue: Sum of revenue in the last month from all non-agricultural businesses owned by the household.

Total monthly household revenue: Sum of household revenue from all non-agricultural businesses (defined above) and household agricultural revenue . The latter is defined as the sum of: Revenue earned from selling crops or crop products produced in the last rainy season divided by 6 to convert into monthly revenue for the past 6 months; and Revenue earned from selling livestock or livestock products in the last 6 months divided by 6 to convert to monthly revenue.

Total monthly household profit: Sum of household profit from all non-agricultural businesses (defined above) and household agricultural profit. The latter is defined as monthly household agricultural revenue minus monthly household agricultural expenses. Monthly household agricultural expenses are calculated as the sum of expenditures on fertilizer, pesticides, seeds, irrigation water, hired machinery, hired labor, livestock assets, livestock inputs, agriculture/crop insurance, transport for agriculture, and other for the last rainy season, multiplied by two (to account for two rainy seasons per year) and divided by 12 (to convert into monthly revenue).

Total monthly household income: Sum of income in the last 12 months from 11 different potential household income sources (cash assistance, food vouchers, wages from salaried employment, pay for casual or domestic work, support from friends/relatives, remittances from within Uganda, remittances from outside Uganda, asset earnings, non-agricultural business revenue used for household purposes, agricultural revenue, and other), divided by 12 to convert to monthly income.

Household exhibits stress coping strategies (stress_coping): Our approach follows the World Food Programme (WFP) Livelihood Coping Strategies index construction. This is a binary variable equal to 1 if the household exhibits at least 1 of 4 stress coping strategies: selling assets; borrowing money; spending savings; or selling/exchanging in-kind assistance. The household is considered to have exhibited the strategy if they engaged in the activity in the last 30 days due to a lack of food or money to buy it during the last 30 days or did not engage in the behavior in the last 30 days because they already engaged in the activity in the last 12 months and could not continue to do so. If 50 percent or more of surveyed households report that a given strategy is not applicable (because they don’t have access to it) that strategy is dropped prior to construction and only the remaining strategies are considered.

Household exhibits crisis coping strategies (crisis_coping): Our approach follows the World Food Programme (WFP) Livelihood Coping Strategies index construction. This is a binary variable equal to 1 if the household exhibits at least 1 of 3 crisis coping strategies: selling productive assets or means of transportation; reducing expenditures on health (including medicine); or withdrawing children from school. The household is considered to have exhibited the strategy if they engaged in the activity in the last 30 days due to a lack of food or money to buy it during the last 30 days or did not engage in the behavior because they already engaged in the activity in the last 12 months and could not continue to do so. If 50 percent or more of surveyed households report that a given strategy is not applicable (because they don’t have access to it) that strategy is dropped prior to construction and only the remaining strategies are considered.

Household exhibits emergency coping strategies (emergency_coping): Our approach follows the World Food Programme (WFP) Livelihood Coping Strategies index construction. This is a binary variable equal to 1 if the household exhibits at least 1 of 3 emergency coping strategies: selling the house or land where they are living; begging and/or scavenging; or engaging in social degrading, high-risk, exploitive, or life-threatening income-generating activities. The household is considered to have exhibited the strategy if they engaged in the activity in the last 30 days due to a lack of food or money to buy it during the last 30 days or did not engage in the behavior because they already engaged in the activity in the last 12 months and could not continue to do so. If 50 percent or more of surveyed households report that a given strategy is not applicable (because they don’t have access to it) that strategy is dropped prior to construction and only the remaining strategies are considered.

Livelihoods coping strategies index: Our approach follows the World Food Programme (WFP) Livelihood Coping Strategies index construction. Each household is assigned a value between 1 and 4: 1 if the household does not exhibit any stress, crisis, or emergency coping strategies (stress_coping, crisis_coping, and emergency_coping all equal 0); 2 if the household exhibits stress coping strategies but does not exhibit any crisis or emergency coping strategies (stress_coping equals 1 but crisis_coping and emergency_coping both equal 0); 3 if the household exhibits crisis coping strategies but does not exhibit any emergency coping strategies (crisis_coping equals 1 but emergency_coping equals 0); 4 if the household exhibits emergency coping strategies (emergency_coping =1). The average index value across all households is reported.

Household food insecurity score: Our approach follows the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS):
1. Assign each household a score from 0-2 for each of three food insecurity situations in the past 30 days: no food to eat in the house, going to sleep hungry at night due to lack of food, going a whole day and night without eating anything. For each situation, if the household did not experience it in the past 30 days they receive a score of 0. If they experienced the situation rarely (1-2 times) or sometimes (3-10 times) they receive a score of 1. If they experienced the situation often (more than 10 times) they receive a score of 2.
2. Sum the scores from each of the 3 situations for each household, resulting in a score from 0-6 for each household. Report the mean score across all households.
3. Create three binary variables based on each household’s total score. A score of 0-1 indicates little to no food insecurity; 2-3 indicates moderate food insecurity, and 4-6 indicates severe food insecurity.

Current household debt: Sum of household debt from 11 different potential sources (relatives in Uganda, friends/neighbors in Uganda, relatives/friends outside of Uganda, landlord, shopkeepers, microfinance institutions, village savings and loan associations, banks, savings and credit cooperative organizations, local businesses or community members, and other).

Current household savings: Sum of household savings from 6 different potential savings instruments (bank account, mobile money account, cash, jewelry, savings groups, and other).

All school-aged children in household are currently enrolled in school: Equals 1 if all school-aged children in the household are currently enrolled in a formal school. Equals 0 if at least one school-aged child in the household is not currently enrolled in a formal school.

All school-aged girls in household are currently enrolled in school: Equals 1 if all school-aged girls in the household are currently enrolled in a formal school. Equals 0 if at least one school-aged girl in the household is not currently enrolled in a formal school.

All children in the household who are enrolled in school attended at least 75% of school days in the past week: For each school-aged child in the household who is enrolled in school, calculate the percentage of time they attended school in the last week as the number of days the child attended school last week divided by the number of days the school was open last week. If the percentage is greater than or equal to 75% for all enrolled children in the household this is equal to 1. If at least one enrolled child has attendance below 75% this is equal to 0. School-aged children who are not enrolled in school are excluded from the construction.

All girls in the household who are enrolled in school attended at least 75% of school days in the past week: For each school-aged girl in the household who is enrolled in school, calculate the percentage of time they attended school in the last week as the number of days the girl attended school last week divided by the number of days the school was open last week. If the percentage is greater than or equal to 75% for all enrolled girls in the household this is equal to 1. If at least one enrolled girl has attendance below 75% this is equal to 0. School-aged girls who are not enrolled in school are excluded.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Three-arm RCT consisting of:
1. Cash-only treatment: Refugee households are provided with a cash transfer only.
2. Cash-plus treatment: Refugee households are provided with a cash transfer and an offer to participate in a complementary intervention
3. Control: Refugee household do not receive a cash transfer or an offer to participate in the complementary intervention during the study period.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Public lottery
Randomization Unit
Household
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
N/A
Sample size: planned number of observations
2,100 households
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
700 households per each of the three study arms: 1) cash only, 2) cash-plus, and 3) control
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
0.15 standard deviations
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Mildmay Uganda Research Ethics Committee (MUREC)
IRB Approval Date
2025-04-14
IRB Approval Number
MUREC-2025-788
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Uganda PAP v1

MD5: ffd55359b20ebda320fcd4cd63303c77

SHA1: ad8f7aa518c26ec7194b510fe4d2923e928b2fdf

Uploaded At: April 24, 2025