Complementary activities to the Government of Ethiopia's social safety net: impact on food security, livelihoods, nutrition, and health

Last registered on August 09, 2022
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Complementary activities to the Government of Ethiopia's social safety net: impact on food security, livelihoods, nutrition, and health
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0009887
Initial registration date
August 08, 2022

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
August 09, 2022, 4:55 PM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Melissa Hidrobo
Affiliation
IFPRI
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Miguel Uribe
PI Affiliation
Causal Design

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2022-05-01
End date
2025-09-30
Keywords
Agriculture, Health
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The Ifaa program, implemented by Catholic Relief Services, will provide an integrated set of complementary activities and services aimed at improving the lives of poor rural households who participate in Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP). The primary objective of the evaluation will be to measure the impact of the Ifaa program on food security, livelihoods, nutrition, and related outcomes in targeted communities. The proposed evaluation will contribute to a growing literature analyzing the effect of multifaceted interventions aimed to graduate poor households out of poverty. The study will use a cluster randomized control design whereby 120 kebeles will be randomly assigned to either receive the Basic PSNP package or the Ifaa enhanced package.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Uribe, Miguel and Melissa Hidrobo. 2022. "Complementary activities to the Government of Ethiopia's social safety net: impact on food security, livelihoods, nutrition, and health." AEA RCT Registry. August 09. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9887-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Ifaa will provide a range of complementary services to PSNP households aimed at strengthening and improving government services; agriculture and livelihood opportunities, health and nutrition, WASH, gender and youth empowerment, and natural resource management and environment. Two packages of interventions will be provided under the evaluation, the "Basic PSNP" and the "Ifaa Enhanced". The Ifaa Enhanced package is the most comprehensive package and contains all the interventions in the Basic PSNP package, plus additional interventions under each domain. The additional interventions include:

Livelihood: financial education, life skill training, marketing training, credit fund, value chain financing, youth fund
Gender and youth: leadership training, community conversations, functional literacy, youth employment skills, school gender club, male engagement
Health and nutrition: health extension, nurturing care groups, adolescent nutrition, home garden promotion
WASH: Community lead total sanitation and hygiene, School WASH
Natural Resource Management: Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), capacity building on local resource governance and sustainable management



Intervention Start Date
2022-07-15
Intervention End Date
2025-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
- Percent of farmers who used financial services in the past 12 months
- Percent of producers who have applied improved management practices or technologies
- The prevalence of moderate and severe food insecurity, based on the FIES
- Prevalence of children 6–23 months receiving a minimum acceptable diet (MAD)
- Percent of women of reproductive age consuming a diet of minimum diversity
- Percent of households in target areas practicing open defecation
- Percent of households with access to a basic sanitation service
- Percent of children under age five who had diarrhea in the prior two weeks
- Ability to recover from shocks and stresses index
- Index of social capital at the household level
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The evaluation will use a cluster randomized control design whereby 50 kebeles will be randomly assigned to receive the Basic PSNP package and the remaining 70 will be randomly assigned to receive the Ifaa Enhanced package of interventions. The randomization will be stratified at the woreda and livelihood eligibility level. Using baseline and endline data, we will compare the households assigned to the Basic PSNP package to those assigned Ifaa Enhanced package in order to identify the impact of the added activities in the Ifaa Enhanced package. Inclusion criteria for households is that they must be a PSNP household and have a women of reproductive age (15-49 years old).
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization was conducted in Stata by the research team
Randomization Unit
Kebele
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
120
Sample size: planned number of observations
4680 households
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1950 Basic PSNP
2730 Ifaa enhanced
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers and Anthropologists
IRB Approval Date
2022-04-19
IRB Approval Number
ESSWA/L/AA/134/2022
IRB Name
Solutions IRB
IRB Approval Date
2022-05-10
IRB Approval Number
2021/11/14
Analysis Plan