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Impact of Cash for Work on Household Welfare in Madagascar

Last registered on February 24, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Impact of Cash For Work Household Welfare in Madagascar
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0003191
Initial registration date
February 21, 2019

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
February 24, 2019, 7:40 PM EST

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
World Bank

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
World Bank

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2016-02-01
End date
2020-02-01
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This study, conducted by the Government of the Madagascar’s Ministry of Social Protection and the Promotion of Women with the support of the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), will evaluate the impact of a multi-year cash-for-work program in Madagascar. This impact evaluation (IE) will assess the impact of the Cash for Work (Argent Contre Travail – ACT) program on communities’ productive assets through water-and soil management, terracing, reforestation etc. In addition, it assesses the impact of cash transfer on agricultural productivity, livelihoods and welfare of the household.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ketema, Tigist and Muthoni Ngatia. 2019. "Impact of Cash For Work Household Welfare in Madagascar." AEA RCT Registry. February 24. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3191-1.0
Former Citation
Ketema, Tigist and Muthoni Ngatia. 2019. "Impact of Cash For Work Household Welfare in Madagascar." AEA RCT Registry. February 24. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3191/history/41984
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
ACT provides extremely poor families with regular income support, during the lean season, over a three-year period. The project intends to help vulnerable rural households where famines and droughts are common, and malnutrition is high. The intervention is designed to address three key drivers of extreme poverty: (i) erosion of communities’ productive assets, (ii) lack of income and productive assets at the household level, and (iii) malnutrition.

The cash for work program consisted of two components, Emergency Infrastructure Preservation and Vulnerability Reduction Project (Projet d´Urgence pour la Préservation des Infrastructures et la Réduction de la Vulnérabilité or PUPIRV), and Emergency Food Security and Social Protection Project (Projet d´Urgence de Soutien à l´Agriculture et la Protection Sociale or PURSAPS). Both components consisted in cash-for-work activities aimed at providing a safety net for the poorest population of selected communities and promoting their productive development.
Intervention Start Date
2016-06-01
Intervention End Date
2018-02-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Assets, Consumption, Nutrition and Food Security, Agricultural outcomes, Household Income, Coping with shocks, Women's outcomes and family wellbeing
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Assets: We are interested in four types of assets: moveable assets, savings, housing, and land. Amongst moveable assets we will examine the total number of livestock and farming assets. We will examine the amount of current savings of the households. We will also examine the ownership and quality of housing stock (e.g. building materials of walls, roof and floor) as well as the availability of electricity and sanitation facilities.

Consumption: We will examine impacts on food consumption as well as food and non-food expenditures. Specifically, food consumption measured as self-reported market value of self-produced food, as well as food purchased from the market in the 7 days before the survey data are collected. Non-food expenditures include transport, leisure, communication, personal care goods, school fees, household expenses (e.g. clothing and utensils), and social expenditures (e.g. baptism, funerals, donations and festivals).

Nutrition and Food Security: Here we will analyze the self-reported number of meals consumed by adults and children in the household. We will also look at the incidence of non-availability of any food in the household, the necessity to borrow food from friends and relatives and the need to reduce the number of meals eaten in a day and a measure of dietary diversity.

Agricultural outcomes: We are interested in total production per hectare, total expenditures on inputs and seeds and the number of crops cultivated.

Household income: We will examine variables related to household income from self-employment, own business, livestock sale, agricultural products sale, and other sources. We want to explore the different income sources of the household and the amount received.

Coping with shocks: We will examine if the household experiences at least one type of shock in the last 12 months and which type of shock. Within the possible shocks we include: drought, flood, death of a family member, and asset theft, loss or damage. We will also assess resilience from the shock.

Women’s outcomes & family wellbeing: Within this section we are interested in studying the following categories: happiness, economic satisfaction, and decision-making power.
We will also analyze the education of children 5 years and above. For this, we measure the school attendance of any/all children in current school year.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The program was carried out in the 17 poorest / most vulnerable regions ranked according to the poverty ratio by region published by INSTAT (National Institute for Statistics) and the food insecurity indicator from the World Food Program in Madagascar. Within each region, the eligible municipalities are those identified by a regional committee composed of regional and local authorities.

The cash for work program consisted of two components, Emergency Infrastructure Preservation and Vulnerability Reduction Project (Projet d´Urgence pour la Préservation des Infrastructures et la Réduction de la Vulnérabilité or PUPIRV), and Emergency Food Security and Social Protection Project (Projet d´Urgence de Soutien à l´Agriculture et la Protection Sociale or PURSAPS). Both components consisted in cash-for-work activities aimed at providing a safety net for the poorest population of selected communities and promoting their productive development.
For PUPIRV, the study communes were drawn randomly at the level of each region among the eligible communes identified by the regional committees.
For the PURSAP, the study communes were also randomly selected from a list of one hundred eligible municipalities. However, the selection of communes was stratified in the case of PURSAP to have balance in terms of program efficiency. Three strata of communes were formed among the eligible communes; accessible communes, moderately accessible communes and communes that are difficult to access. Thus, to keep a certain level of acceptable average cost of administration at the overall level, the number of intervention communes per stratum is inversely proportional to the level of access difficulty of the stratum.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
randomization done in office by a computer,
Randomization Unit
Commune
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
84
Sample size: planned number of observations
5000 households
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
2510 households in control, 2494 households in treatment
42 clusters in treatment, 42 clusters in control
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Power calculations determined the 5,000 respondents with 84 communes and an average of 60 respondents per commune the study should be able to detect a standardized effect size of 0.21 standard deviations at 80% power.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials