A multifaceted program causes lasting progress for the very poor: Evidence from six countries

A persistent concern about wellintentioned efforts to improve living standards for the 1.2 billion people who survive (if it can be called that) on less than $1.25 US per day is figuring out what works. A second concern is figuring out whether what works in one setting can be made to work in another. Banerjee et al. describe encouraging results from a set of pilot projects in Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru encompassing 11,000 households. Each project provided short-term aid and longer-term support to help participants graduate to a sustainable level of existence. Science , this issue 10.1126/science.1260799 Helping people in Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru to become self-employed enables the very poor to become less poor. We present results from six randomized control trials of an integrated approach to improve livelihoods among the very poor. The approach combines the transfer of a productive asset with consumption support, training, and coaching plus savings encouragement and health education and/or services. Results from the implementation of the same basic program, adapted to a wide variety of geographic and institutional contexts and with multiple implementing partners, show statistically significant cost-effective impacts on consumption (fueled mostly by increases in self-employment income) and psychosocial status of the targeted households. The impact on the poor households lasted at least a year after all implementation ended. It is possible to make sustainable improvements in the economic status of the poor with a relatively short-term intervention.