A body of research supports cash transfers as a way to improve the lives of vulnerable and poor populations, but few studies have examined how the impacts change over time. In addition, poor rural households face institutional and market obstacles, and transfers alone may not be enough to overcome these barriers. In Liberia and Malawi, researchers are partnering with IPA, GiveDirectly, and USAID to evaluate the impact of an unconditional cash transfer and market access program on food security, wealth, resilience, intimate partner violence, and psychological well-being over four years.

Many farmers in sub-Saharan Africa may be reluctant to adopt productivity-enhancing technologies because they lack persuasive information on the proper use of new inputs or agricultural techniques from credible sources. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether the position of a trained lead farmer within a community’s social network affected other farmers’ decisions to adopt a new agricultural technology in Malawi. Results suggest that having access to multiple lead farmers/central individuals has the potential to increase adoption and speed the diffusion process of the technology. In other words, the researchers showed that targeting multiple central lead farmers was necessary to generate technology adoption in Malawi. Photo: A farmer in Malawi checks her maize crop that is struggling as a result of the worst drought in three decades. © 2016 CIAT/Neil Palmer

Improving access to family planning in sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to help women and couples achieve their desired family size, reduce high-risk pregnancies, and improve child health and growth. In Malawi, IPA worked with researchers to measure how an increase in access to family planning—through information, free transportation, and reimbursements for family planning services—impacted women’s fertility, health, and well-being. Researchers found that women were 6 percentage points more likely to be using contraception after two years of exposure to the services and were at lower risk of short birth spacing, among other positive outcomes. Preliminary results also suggest that the intervention reduced child stunting and increased young children’s cognitive development.