One Plus One can be Greater than Two: Evaluating Synergies of Development Programmes in Malawi

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the interplay between the Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP) and the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) in Malawi. We take advantage of data collected from a 17-month evaluation of a sample of households eligible to receive SCTP, which also provided information about inclusion into FISP. We estimate two types of synergies: i) the complementarity between SCTP and FISP, that is whether the impact of both interventions run together is larger than the sum of the impacts of these interventions when run separately, and ii) the incremental impact of receiving FISP when a household already receives SCTP, as well as the incremental impact of receiving SCTP when a household already receives FISP. The analysis shows that there are synergies between the two policy interventions, mainly in terms of incremental impacts of each programme over the other, in increasing expenditure, agricultural production and livestock.

Acknowledgments

We thank: Fabio Veras Soares for his peer-review of an earlier version of the article, an anonymous referee and the journal editor for providing essential inputs. We are also grateful for the comments received at the following conferences: the Transfer Project workshop in Addis Ababa, the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) conference in Oxford, the Pacific Development conference in Riverside, and the fourth Annual Bank Conference on Africa (ABCA) in Berkeley. Errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors. The data used in this paper were collected by the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill and the Centre for Social Research of the University of Malawi for the impact evaluation of the Social Cash Transfer Programme, commissioned by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Malawi. The SCTP impact evaluation falls under a larger effort, the Transfer Project, jointly implemented by UNICEF, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Save the Children and UNC, which supports the implementation of cash transfer evaluations in sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis included in this article is part of this broader research agenda. Data are not currently publically available, but the authors will facilitate access to estimation, raw data and code in a timely and effective way, if necessary under license to the ultimate owner.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Kilic et al. (2013) explain that the limited pro-poor targeting stems from community-based targeting (that is open forums in which village residents identify beneficiaries in a collective fashion) that are co-opted by more influential community members. Their analysis suggests that, on average, households that are relatively well-off, connected to community leadership, and residing in agro-ecologically favourable locations are more likely to be FISP beneficiaries and receive more input coupons.

2. For details about the programme implementation and funding, see Asfaw et al. (2015) and Handa et al. (2015b).

3. These groups of households represent, respectively, 33.3 and 18.8 per cent of the original sample.

4. Table B1 in Appendix B (available in the Supplementary Materials) provides tests of differences between households excluded versus households included in the analysis of this paper. The group of households excluded from the study sample is relatively better off. This is not surprising since it includes households that received agricultural input subsidies already at baseline or in the previous two years.

5. Table C3 in Appendix C (available in the Supplementary Materials) shows the stand-alone impact of SCTP and FISP, as well as their joint impact and complementarities on a set of indicators of labour supply (total number of days in farming activities, total number of days in ganyu labour, total number of days in wage labour) and hired labour (days of workers hired, total and by sex). The results show a clear negative and significant impact of the SCTP on hours spent in casual labour (Ganyu labour), especially for labour of unconstrained households. No effect is detected on the number of days in farming activities, number of hours in wage labour and number of days of hired labour.

6. This index is generated through a principal component analysis which includes the following items: hand hoes, axes, panga knifes, sickles, watering cans.

7. To support this view, we regress the total land cultivated for any kind of crop over the same set of regressors included in all the estimates. The results (not included in the paper but available upon request) show that FISP alone and especially FISP combined with SCTP increase the size of total land cultivated. Moreover, the incremental impact of FISP on SCTP is positive and significant for labour constrained households.

8. (2017) investigates both the local-economy wide impact evaluation of several stand-alone programmes (SCTP, FISP, public works programme, extension services and irrigation projects) and their combinations, and the CBA. Here we refer only to the section on the CBA.

9. The benefit-cost ratio for Option B is 1.56 USD per 1 USD of combined programmes’ costs.