Do asset transfers build household resilience?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Phadera, Lokendra; Michelson, Hope; Winter-Nelson, Alex; Goldsmith, Peter
• 署名单位: University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; The World Bank
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.01.003
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 205-227
• 关键词: Poverty dynamics; resilience; livestock; Asset transfers

摘要

We estimate the impact of an asset transfer program on household resilience. We measure resilience as the probability that a household will sustain at least the threshold asset level required to support consumption above the poverty line. Using six rounds of data collected over 42 months in rural Zambia, we construct a measure of resilience based on households' conditional welfare distributions to estimate program impacts. We find that the program increased household resilience; beneficiaries' likelihood of being non-poor in future periods increased by 44%. The program both increased mean assets and decreased variance, signaling an upward shift in households' conditional asset distributions. Our method demonstrates the added value of the resilience estimation compared with a conventional impact assessment; numerous households classified as non-poor are unlikely to remain non-poor over time and the relationship between wealth and resilience is driven by changes in both the conditional mean and the conditional variance.