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To help alleviate poverty and vulnerability by augmenting the skills-base of low income, poor and vulnerable families through vocational training.
To evaluate the effectiveness of asset and cash transfers, hence providing policy recommendations towards designing the best social safety net which can improve incomes of the ultra-poor.
To study how children’s development in early life is impacted by alternative forms of social protection programs.
PxD’s Advisory with leading agronomists and climate change experts provide key recommendations that enable farmers to better adapt their practices to climate change, as well as help farmers mitigate the potential adverse impacts of climate change to the quality and quantity of their yields.
Principal Investigators:
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Low-income countries are increasingly setting up welfare systems and providing economic opportunities for their citizens through cash transfer, employment generation, and skills enhancement programmes. Many of these policies are directed towards those who have been historically excluded from state programmes—the poor, rural inhabitants, and women. The success of such policies relies on these individuals being able to access the benefits provided to them. In practice, we often see “money left on the table” in that studies document how villagers do not obtain subsidised rice, widows fail to take advantage of monthly stipends, and women are unable to obtain vocational training, despite the large gains such programmes may have.
This project aims to help alleviate poverty and vulnerability by augmenting the skills-base of low income, poor and vulnerable families by improving their technical and vocational skills. The main goal is to increase the rate of income growth in poor and vulnerable households in high poverty districts of Southern Punjab – Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Lodhran, and Muzaffargarh.
This project uses experimental variation to estimate the value of one such access constraint—travel that requires a woman to move outside her community. We study a skills development programme in rural Pakistan, which is representative of many underdeveloped regions throughout the world where female mobility—a widely recognised barrier to development —is a challenge for both logistical and cultural reasons.
2012 – ongoing
Government of Punjab, Punjab Skills Development Fund (PSDF), DFID (FCDO), British Asian Trust, Kaarvan Crafts Foundation
Social Protection, Poverty, Employment, Economic Mobility, Female Empowerment, Rural Economy, Poverty Alleviation, Technical Skills, Vocational Skills, Welfare Systems, Travel, Female Mobility
Principal Investigators:
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The Asset Transfer Project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of asset and cash transfers, hence providing policy recommendations towards designing the best social safety net which can improve incomes of the ultra-poor.
More than 40 million people live below the national poverty line in Pakistan. Ten million of them reside in the rural southern districts of Punjab. The asset transfer program is being implemented by National Rural Support Program (NRSP) and Farmer Development Organization (FDO) in four districts of Southern Punjab namely; Bahawalpur, Muzaffargarh, Lodhran, and Bahawalnagar. Theoretical research has shown that asset-transfer programmes coupled with complementary training, significantly and permanently raise the economic well-being of ultra-poor households through their engagement in basic entrepreneurship. There is also evidence that UCTs foster entrepreneurial activity. Using randomised control trials, this research is among the first to compare these kinds of asset transfer programmes to UCTs in the local context of Pakistan.
2012 – concluding
Policy Brief:
Poverty Alleviation, Social Protection, Impact Evaluation, Experimental Research Design
Principal Investigators:
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The project will in particular use and build on an earlier randomised control trial intervention (part of CERP’s Asset Transfer project) targeted at the poorest households in rural Punjab, Pakistan. In 2014, households were randomly assigned to either receive asset transfers (typically in the form of livestock) or the equivalent unconditional cash transfer. In the subsequent eight years, both forms of social assistance are documented to have substantial impacts on the labour market activities, earnings and investments of treated households.
This project will investigate how each form of social assistance impacted children’s outcomes, for those born prior, during or just after the original intervention. A range of child outcomes will be studied, and measures of cognitive and non-cognitive development for children between the ages of 0-8 years. We will also collect information to identify the mechanisms generating child development outcomes, such as parental beliefs and attitudes. This data will be collected from a sample of ultra-poor households residing in the four Project Districts: Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Muzaffargarh and Lodhran. Three different child development tools (the IDEALA tool for children aged 48 months – 7 years 11 months 30 days, Liz Spelke’s tasks for children aged 36 months – 7 years 11 months 30 days and a brief child development assessment for children aged 6-35 months 30 days) will be used along with a section on mother or primary caregiver’s physical and mental health to measure outcomes at different stages of child development.
The IDELA is an internationally validated tool which has already been used by multiple research teams in Pakistan (https://idela-network.org/about/). All tests are direct assessments except the CREDI which exclusively relies on mother or primary caregiver reports, and thus, primarily focuses on milestones and behaviors that are easy for mothers or primary caregivers to understand, observe, and describe. Interviewers will conduct the surveys with children in the respondents’ homes and the mothers/caregivers will be present at all times during the interview.
2020-Ongoing
3IE, Yale University
Early Childhood Development, Social Assistance, Social Protection, Poverty
Principal Investigators:
Precision Development (PxD) is intensifying their efforts to provide information to smallholder farmers that will allow them to make informed decisions to reduce the risks that climate change presents to their livelihoods and to enjoin their farming and land management activities in the fight against climate change. PxD is focusing on identifying interventions that can improve smallholder livelihoods whilst incorporating climate adaptation and mitigation efforts into their existing services.
PxD’s advisory has been put together with leading agronomists and climate change experts that provide key recommendations that enable farmers to better adapt their practices to climate change, as well as help farmers mitigate the potential adverse impacts of climate change on the quality and quantity of their yields.
PxD’s systems are designed to scale the delivery of customised digital information to individuals and households so that they act on it to improve their well-being and reduce exposure to risks and disasters such as floods and droughts. Their systems are designed to be scaled; as they scale, average costs fall and they improve the cost-effectiveness of their delivery.
Climate-smart advisory, adaptation, and mitigation efforts are already embedded into their programs across all the districts of Punjab in Pakistan, as well as into the day-to-day agricultural activities that PxD farmers carry out. They focus both on climate change adaptation (reducing potential damage) and climate change mitigation (tackling the causes), as the activities and approaches are distinct.
In Punjab, PxD sends out advisory via robocalls and SMS to over 1.3 million farmers. This advisory covers all major cash crop and several types of livestock in Punjab.
Research Questions
Examples of PxD’s work:
2020 – ongoing
IFAD
Agriculture Department GOP, IFAD, HarvestPlus, CERP, CFAN, Ayub Agriculture Research Institute, RCDS
Climate Change, Nutrition, Food Insecurity, Agriculture