Graduation as ResilienceBRAC - IDS

Addressing Psychological Wellbeing: Does it matter for extreme poverty programmes?

Proof of concept research

March 16th 2016 Martin Greeley, IDS, Sussex

ESRC-DFID Conference: Lessons from a Decade’s Research on Poverty

• Ultra poverty is an inability to meet even the barest of basic needs.

• The ultra poor are typically food insecure, have few or no assets, lack education, and suffer from poor health.

• Ultra poor households are often headed by women.

• Ultra poor women tend to be the victims of social exclusion and lack self-confidence or opportunities to build the skills and resilience necessary to plan their own futures.

• Often chronic and intergenerational, ultra poverty creates a trap that is incredibly difficult for women and their families to escape. -

Who do extreme poverty graduation progammes target?

The Poorest : A Structural Break

Variables PWR ‘Poorest’

PWR‘Just above the poorest’

% widow 20% 6%

% HHs with no adult male 21% 3%

% HHs having school aged children labouring rather than school

12% 7%

% HHs no cultivable land 90% 76%

% HHs not owning homestead land 44% 24%

% HHs current MFI participation 8% 35%

*PWR = participatory wealth ranking

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Definition of the Ultra Poor

• Households with < 10 decimals of land.• Those who earn livelihood as beggar, day

labourer, domestic aid.• Households with no productive assets.• Children of school-going age

taking up paid work .• No adult active male member in the

household .

A Bangladesh example – BRAC’s Targeting the Ultra Poor programme

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Key Interventions CFPR-TUP• Targeting

• Enterprise Development:

• Life Skills Training

• Asset Transfer • Consumption Stipend

• Customised Healthcare Services • Community Mobilisation and Social Integration • Hands-On Coaching/Training • Confidence-building training: • Financial Services:

Per capita income (BDT)Had available/surplus food in last one year

Programme effect after 4 years 2,049*** 0.0407**

(217.5) (0.017)

Programme effect after 6 years 3,042*** 0.156***

(294.6) (0.021)

Mean of outcome in the treated communities at baseline 6,648 0.140

Number of eligible households 5225 5225

Adjusted R-squared 0.111 0.106

Observations 15,675 15,675

Impact on per capita income (BDT) (2007 constant price) and food security

CFPR-TUP Phase Two results 2007 -2014 (draft)

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Impact Assessment of CGAP-Ford Pilots

• Statistically significant impacts on all 10 key outcomes:

Abhijit Banerjee et al. Science 2015;348:1260799

• Impacts still evident 12 months after end of intervention and 36 months after asset transfer

• Income and revenues significantly higher in every country

• Consumption• Food security• Productive and

household assets• Financial inclusion• Time use

• Income and revenues• Physical health• Mental health• Political involvement• Women’s

empowerment

Program Evaluation Results

3 Motivations for the research

A. Conceptualising Extreme Poverty - Learning from poverty analysis

B. Field experience

C. Behavioural economics and impact reports

The research process

A. Choice of Ryff’s model of Psychological Wellbeing and developing the instrument Six dimensions: self-acceptance, positive relationship with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life and personal growth.

B. Canvassing the research instrument – the randomised control trial on BRAC’s Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the Ultra Poor programme (CFPR-TUP)

Development of the survey Instrument

The psychological wellbeing (PWB) Questionnaire has been finalised through a step wise reduction method described briefly below.

Item construction. Preliminary items (total 97 items) were constructed through extensive literature review consulting different models of wellbeing as well as existing wellbeing questionnaires. After completing the literature review, three separate Focus Group Discussions were conducted with the stakeholders –ultra-poor rural women- to explore their views in relation to psychological wellbeing. Based on insights from the FGDs and literature review, the total items were reduced to 56 and then they were written in the form of statements. Then there was a peer review for language suitability and conceptual fitting of the items to the local context.

First field trial of initially developed items. These 56 items were tried out on 8 ultra-poor households to judge concept familiarity, ambiguity and language. The selected items were then modified and reduced to 48 items.

Final field survey instrument. These 48 modified statements were then given to 2 subject matter experts (SME) to assess ambiguity and appropriateness for the local culture including choice of scale and presentation format. After further modification 44 items were retained. These items were then converted to a 10 point Likert scale format. Scores on all the 44 items were obtained from a sample of 1,200 ultra-poor households.

C. Exploratory Factor Analysis - five of six dimensions identified based on 44 responses (scores) from 1,200 participants. D. Integration of wellbeing factors with impact survey results. We know for the impact survey that Programme participation was good for material wellbeing outcomes. Two dimensions of wellbeing positively associated with programme participation – personal growth and self-acceptance (autonomy was negatively associated).

Next Activities:

Finalising Stage One report and journal article

Stage Two funded through the ESRC-DFID Development Frontiers Challenge Programme

Moving from correlation to causation by examining two programmes on graduating households out of extreme poverty – one which has serious levels of psychological support to the female participants and one that does not.

Impact QuestionsIncreasing the effectiveness and impact of poverty

Increasing the effectiveness and impact of poverty alleviation research: communications, research uptake and and pathways to impact

Effective engagement between research, policy and practice;Role in national and global ‘graduation programme advocacy’Further research already funded on the extreme poverty graduation programme (CLM) run by

Fonkoze in Haiti

Capacity building of researchers and institutions located in the global South (including early career researchers)

Southern-owned programme; Economist, Jinnat Ara (BRAC RED) and Social Psychologist, Asheek Shimul, (Dhaka University)

Involving communities and stakeholders in the co-construction of research questions, methods, data gathering and analysis

Research instrument validation process; ground-truthing of findings

Effective collaboration between institutions and sectors in both ‘North’ and ‘South’.Ten year MoU BRAC-IDS; multiple research partnerships and capacity-building initiatives)

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The Lifecycle Approach: Poverty Dynamics Linked to Risks Faced by People Across Lives

Source: Dr. Stephen Kidd, September 2013

The Lifecycle Approach: Poverty Dynamics Linked to Risks Faced by People Across Lives