Poverty Alleviation and Interhousehold Transfers : Evidence from BRAC's Graduation Program in Bangladesh
Poor households often rely on transfers from their social networks for consumption smoothing, yet there is limited evidence on how antipoverty programs affect informal transfers. This paper exploits the randomized roll-out of BRAC's ultra-poor...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/728131604499775226/Poverty-Alleviation-and-Interhousehold-Transfers-Evidence-from-BRACs-Graduation-Program-in-Bangladesh http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34734 |
| Summary: | Poor households often rely on transfers
from their social networks for consumption smoothing, yet
there is limited evidence on how antipoverty programs affect
informal transfers. This paper exploits the randomized
roll-out of BRAC's ultra-poor graduation program in
Bangladesh and panel data covering over 21,000 households
over seven years to study the program's effects on
interhousehold transfers. The program crowds out informal
transfers received by the program's beneficiaries, but
this is driven mainly by outside-village transfers. Treated
ultra-poor households become more likely to both give and
receive transfers to/from wealthier households within their
communities; and less likely to receive transfers from their
employers. As a result, the reciprocity of their
within-village transfers increases. The findings imply that,
within rural communities, there is positive assortative
matching by socio-economic status. A reduction in poverty
enables households to engage more in reciprocal transfer
arrangements and lowers the interlinkage of their labor with
informal insurance. |
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