How far does a big push really push? Mitigating ultra-poverty in Bangladesh

BRAC implemented the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Specially
Targeted Ultra-Poor (CFPR) program in 2002 to mitigate ultra-poverty in the
poorest districts of Bangladesh, providing multifaceted support in the form of
asset-transfer, food-stipends, education, healthcare and social support for two
years. Utilizing a four-round panel data spanning 9 years and combining
regression and propensity score weighting, we evaluate CFPR’s short and long
term impact on income, employment, social status, food security and asset
ownership. While remarkable effects of CFPR are evident in short and
medium-term (up to 6 years since baseline), longer-term effects (up to 9 years)
are smaller. The latter happens due to a variety of factors including faster
catch-up by the control group, due partly to various new interventions by state
and non-state sectors. We see a shift from begging, working as maids and day-
laboring to entrepreneurial activities in the short and medium term, but many
CFPR households revert back to their baseline employment by 2011. Analyses
of the heterogeneity of effects across baseline employment and gender of the
household-head reveal greater long-term impact on per-capita income for
entrepreneurs and greater short-term impact for female-headed households.
Overall, despite the deceleration of the effects in the long run, the program
was able to successfully bring its participants out of ultra-poverty and had
important demonstration effects.