An empirically driven theory of poverty reduction

An empirically driven theory of poverty reduction

This research project paper of CEDIL describes the use of secondary evaluation data from four government unconditional cash transfer programmes (UCTs) to identify high- and low-flyers, that is, those households that are able to use the income shock to significantly improve their living standards and those who aren’t. The authors attempt to categorize the high- and low-flyers to create typologies based on their pre-shock characteristics. They also look at post-treatment behaviours to see what participants of these programmes did with the cash to improve (or not) their living standards. Putting together these different pieces of information (pre-treatment characteristics and post-treatment behaviours) can help with understanding the different pathways out of poverty, and ultimately contribute to a middle-range theory of sustained poverty reduction.