The Impacts of Cash Transfers on Women’s Empowerment : Learning from Pakistan’s BISP Program
Large-scale government cash transfer programs have become an important element of social protection and poverty reduction strategies throughout the developing world. Pakistan is no exception; in 2008, Pakistan established the Benazir Income Support...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/840271488779553030/The-impacts-of-cash-transfers-on-women-s-empowerment-learning-from-Pakistan-s-BISP-program http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26272 |
| Summary: | Large-scale government cash transfer
programs have become an important element of social
protection and poverty reduction strategies throughout the
developing world. Pakistan is no exception; in 2008,
Pakistan established the Benazir Income Support Program
(BISP) as an unconditional cash transfer targeted at the
poorest of the poor. The primary goal of the BISP program is
to provide the poorest households in Pakistan with
unconditional transfers in order to improve their
consumption and investments in children. To attain this
goal, it is believed important that the transfers are
provided directly to women to ensure the funds are spent as
intended. Beyond changes in consumption and investment,
directing these transfers to women can also serve to empower
women by increasing household resources under their control.
We analyze the impacts of Pakistan’s BISP program on women’s
decision-making power within households using data collected
between 2011 and 2013 as the program was rolling out. Using
fuzzy regression discontinuity methods to statistically
identify impacts, the BISP transfer is found to have
substantial, positive impacts on some variables measuring
women’s decision-making power and empowerment. |
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