Impact Evaluation of Cash Transfers and Social Promotion Activities in Mauritania

Tekavoul, implemented by Tadamoun (Agence Nationale de Lutte contre les Séquelles de l’Esclavage, l’Insertion et la Lutte contre la Pauvreté), is Mauritania’s flagship social protection program. It provides extremely poor households with cash transfers and social promotion activities covering topics such as hygiene, nutrition, and early childhood development. While cash transfers can alleviate credit constraints in the short run, these alone may not be sufficient to end the cycle of poverty. The program includes, therefore, accompanying social promotion activities that are expected to ensure the sustainability and cost-effectiveness of the intervention by promoting human capital investments. Tekavoul aims to reach approximately 100,000 extremely poor households by 2020.

Beneficiary households receive cash payments every three months for a period of five years (renewable upon re-certification of the household status). Payments are conditional on attendance of social promotion sessions and made to the person in charge of the daily health, nutrition and education of the children in the household, usually the mother of the children. The amount of the payment is MRO 60,000 (US$ 200) per household per year and is paid in four installments of MRO 15,000. This corresponds to around 16% of extremely poor households’ consumption and 38% of the gap between average expenditure and extreme poverty. The amount is in line with transfers observed in comparable West African contexts.

The social promotion activities aim to improve human capital investments and focus explicitly on women and children. The core themes tackled during these activities include health and hygiene, nutrition, socio-emotional development, education, and child rights and protection. Before receiving each tri-monthly transfer, Tekavoul recipients grouped in Social Promotion Spaces (SPS) are asked to attend social promotion sessions that cover three themes each time. Sessions are led by animators hired by Tadamoun and last approximately one hour and a half. The messages are simple and easily illustrated in practice, and repeated during two consecutive sessions in order to facilitate learning. In the areas covered by the impact evaluation, only half of the SPS participate in the social promotion activities.

2018-01-15

2025-12-31

Consumption: per capita measures of food, non-food, and durable good consumption; Food Security: standardized measures of hunger, including Household Hunger Scales and Dietary Diversity scores;
Income and Revenues: all income, including employment, business, and transfer income; Resiliency: incidence and response to shocks, preparation for seasonal variations in income; Assets: ownership and value of household and productive assets; Finance: borrowing, lending, and savings; Expenditure: specifically, transfers and celebration spending; Health and nutrition: height and weight of children under 5; Early childhood development: cognitive development, language, motor development, socio-emotional development and mental health measured with the Caregiver-Reported Early Development Index (CREDI).

Time use: time spent on agriculture, in employment, in other productive activities; Mental Health and non-cognitive skills: depression, locus of control and aspirations; Women’s empowerment: decision-making power and agency, constraints to mobility; Political involvement: involvement in social and political groups; Physical health: sickness, healthcare use; Gender-based violence: domestic violence, attitudes towards violence.

The interventions described above are being evaluated using a randomized controlled trial (RCT). We adopt a two-level random assignment strategy. In a first stage, eligible households from the Social Registry are randomly selected to receive cash transfers, regardless of their PMT scores. The randomization is stratified by commune and ensuring that there is balance on a set of key indicators between the treatment and control group. Once informed of their treatment status, beneficiaries enroll in the Tekavoul intervention and be assigned to a social promotion space (SPS) of 38-40 households. In a second stage, the SPS are assigned to treatment groups through public lotteries. The selection of groups to receive social promotion activities is conducted at this stage. All households in an SPS receive the same treatment.

Not available

Individual randomization conducted using Stata; Cluster randomization conducted through public lotteries

Individual randomization: households; Cluster randomization: SPS (social promotion spaces)

Yes

117 SPS

4,509 households

62 SPS with social promotion, 55 SPS without social promotion