Graduating the Poor
“Much of the news about global poverty is depressing, but this is fabulous: a large-scale experiment showing, with rigorous evidence, what works to lift people out of the most extreme poverty.”
—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times
CGAP’s Graduating the Poor Initiative mobilizes select policy makers, funders, researchers, and other stakeholders to help governments scale up this successful approach for supporting extreme poor families to make sustainable gains in consumption, income, assets, and well-being by building viable livelihoods. The approach, which has been rigorously tested in 10 pilots in eight countries, combines a carefully sequenced set of interventions targeted to very poor people, including consumption support, livelihoods assistance, an asset transfer, access to savings services, and coaching.
FY2015 Highlights/Outputs
Generated and shared impact evidence and global knowledge and emerging good practices to encourage crowding-in of over 30 new implementers of the Graduation Approach, two-thirds of which are large-scale government social protection programs.
Science article summarized six random control trial (RCT) impact studies on the pilots, reaffirming the credibility of the model. The article led to significant media coverage, including an op-ed in The New York Times, a full page in The Economist, and articles by other major news sources. A CGAP-produced infographic accompanied the publication. View Infographic
A CGAP-Ford-IPA-J-PAL event unpacking the evidence from the six RCT impact studies on the pilots. It featured policy makers from countries beyond the initial Graduation reference group (Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Paraguay) as well as strong participation from the World Bank Social Protection and Labor Practice and countries including Ethiopia.View Studies