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How Big Does a “Big Push” Need to Be? Experimental Evidence on Asset Transfer Size
Presented by:
Adam Osman
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Friday, February 21, 2025
12:00 pm-1:15 pm
Taylor-Hibbard Seminar Room (Rm103)
Poverty is persistent but the evidence regarding the existence of poverty traps is mixed. In the presence of a poverty trap, only cost-intensive ``big push'' interventions such as the increasingly popular "graduation model" can durably improve living standards. We carry out a cluster randomized trial of a graduation program in Upper-Egypt varying experimentally the size of the transfer (between full and half transfer), and evaluate these interventions up to 40 months later. Positive impacts on asset ownership, consumption and food security are sustained over time and remain sizeable at the 40-month mark, for both half- and full-transfer beneficiaries. A test comparing the effect of the half- and full-transfer treatments on post-transfer asset dynamics at different points in the baseline asset distribution yields no support for the presence of a poverty trap.