The Impact of Earned and Windfall Transfers on Livelihoods And
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Erwin Bulte The impact of earned and windfall Bob Conteh cash transfers on livelihoods and Andreas Kontoleon John List conservation in Sierra Leone Esther Mokuwa Paul Richards August 2016 Ty Turley Maarten Voors Impact Social protection Evaluation Report 46 About 3ie The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) is an international grant-making NGO promoting evidence-informed development policies and programmes. We are the global leader in funding, producing and synthesising high-quality evidence of what works, how, why and at what cost. We believe that better and policy-relevant evidence will make development more effective and improve people’s lives. 3ie impact evaluations 3ie-supported impact evaluations assess the difference a development intervention has made to social and economic outcomes. 3ie is committed to funding rigorous evaluations that include a theory-based design, use the most appropriate mix of methods to capture outcomes and are useful in complex development contexts. About this report 3ie accepted the final version of this report, The impact of earned and windfall transfers on livelihoods and conservation in Sierra Leone, as partial fulfilment of requirements under grant TW1.1042 issued under Thematic Window 1. The content has been copy-edited and formatted for publication by 3ie. All of the content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not represent the opinions of 3ie, its donors or its board of commissioners. Any errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors. Any comments or queries should be directed to the corresponding author, Maarten Voors at [email protected] Funding for this impact evaluation was provided by 3ie’s donors, which include UK aid, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation. A complete listing of all of 3ie’s donors can be found on the 3ie website. Suggested citation: Bulte, E, Conteh, B, Kontoleon, A, List, J, Mokuwa, E, Richards, P, Turley, T and Voors, M, 2016, The impact of earned and windfall transfers on livelihoods and conservation in Sierra Leone, 3ie Impact Evaluation Report 46. New Delhi: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) 3ie Impact Evaluation Report Series executive editors: Jyotsna Puri and Beryl Leach Managing editor: Deepthy Menon Production manager: Pradeep Singh Copy editor: Shreya Ray Proofreader: Rajib Chatterjee Cover design: John F McGill and Akarsh Gupta Printer: Via Interactive Cover photo: Terry Sunderland/Center for International Forestry Research © International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), 2016 The impact of earned and windfall transfers on livelihoods and conservation in Sierra Leone Erwin Bulte Wageningen University University of Utrecht Bob Conteh Njala Univeristy Andreas Kontoleon University of Cambridge John List University of Chicago Esther Mokuwa Njala Univeristy Paul Richards Njala Univeristy Ty Turley Brigham Young University Maarten Voors Wageningen University University of Cambridge 3ie Impact Evaluation Report 46 August 2016 Acknowledgment We are indebted to the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the Gola Rainforest National Park Programme (until 2012 supported by the European Union, Fonds Français pour l'Environnement Mondial and the Global Conservation Fund at Conservation International), Bird Life International, Martha Ross, Paul Hofman, Esther Mokuwa, Koen Leuveld, Lizzy van de Wal, Jan Duchoslav, Wytse Vellema, Froukje Pelsma, and Francesco Cecchi for their collaboration in this project. Research discussed in this publication has been funded by N.W.O. grant # 452-04- 333, the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme, the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation Inc. (3ie) (grant # TW1.1042) through the Global Development Network (GDN). The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the funders or its members. We acknowledge the loyalty and hard work of the team of field enumerators and the patience and cooperation of interviewees. i Summary This study uses a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Sierra Leone to measure the impact of a transfer program aimed at alleviating poverty and reducing pressure on the natural environment. In Sierra Leone, there is currently limited micro-level empirical evidence on unintended social impacts of aid and, in particular, the differential social effects of conditional versus unconditional aid. To this end, we implemented three versions of a transfer program in 91 rural communities in Sierra Leone, which were dependent on slash and burn agriculture. One version provides aid as a windfall transfer to the household, the second allows the chief to distribute the aid as he sees fit within the community, and the third is run as an aid-for-work program that makes household transfers conditional on supplying labor. We compare outcomes across a range of social, economic and land-use indicators. We find that the way in which aid is distributed—communal versus individual and windfall versus earned—has a significant effect on how the aid will be used. Earned aid given directly to the individual leads to more consumption with little attention given to public goods. Windfall aid given to community leaders leads to more public goods that are better managed. In terms of impact on households’ livelihoods and support for conservation, our results are sobering and inconclusive. We find no significant impact on economic, social, and conservation outcomes. This may in part be explained by the high sense of community we find in these villages—over 60 per cent of aid allocated to community projects. Much of the aid being spent on a community project does significantly dampen the potential individual-level impact. In addition, there is also the possibility that the per capita amount of aid (USD 15) may have been too low to impact households significantly. Finally, given the small sample, 91 villages in total, null results may reflect low statistical power rather than a lack of impact on outcomes. Subsequently, we can only draw limited lessons for policymakers, key influencers, or implementers who need to know about mechanisms and behavioral bottlenecks. If you take our null results at face value, the most cost-effective way to implement a livelihood support program in rural villages is to make unconditional transfers (so that you do not have to spend any resources on monitoring or verification) at the village level (in order to save labor costs by not requiring field staff to visit every household). The organization of the work projects that allowed participants to earn livelihood support took significant time and there is limited evidence it created some ill-will. These results should be informative to a policymaker who is trying to decide how to implement a livelihood support program. It sheds light on the trade-offs the policymaker must weigh when designing such a program. We hope this research project leads to better understanding and research on the social dimensions of aid dispersion. ii Contents Acknowledgment ......................................................................................................i Summary ...................................................................................................................ii List of figures and tables ........................................................................................iv Abbreviations and acronyms ..................................................................................v 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................1 1.1 Report structure ...........................................................................................4 2. Intervention, theoretical motivation, and research hypotheses ....................4 2.1 Intervention, key objectives, key activities, and components ........................4 2.2 Primary outcomes and impacts of interest. ...................................................7 2.3 Theoretical motivation and underlying assumptions ...................................11 3. Context.............................................................................................................15 3.1 Site selection ..............................................................................................15 3.2 Local context ..............................................................................................16 3.3 External validity ..........................................................................................18 4. Timeline ...........................................................................................................18 4.1 Timeline of the program .............................................................................18 5. Evaluation: Design, methods, and implementation ...................................... 20 5.1 Ethical review .............................................................................................20 5.2 Evaluation strategy .....................................................................................20 5.3 Sample size and attrition ............................................................................20 5.4 Balance ......................................................................................................21 5.5 Surveys and experimental data ..................................................................23 5.6 Data quality control ....................................................................................23