Who Benefits from Development Programs?

Many development programs in low-income countries (e.g., cash transfers, employment support, or business training) seek to (i) increase living standards of the poor, and (ii) reduce inequality.

Prior research predominantly answers those questions for individual programs, making it difficult to draw broad conclusions. We ask “to what extent do development programs in general accomplish those goals?” The question has three parts: 1. Are program participants typically drawn from the better-off, or the worse-off, among those eligible? 2.

Conditional on participation, who benefits more, the better-off, or the worse-off? 3. Combining both channels, do program benefits overall accrue more to the better-off, or the worse-off?

We will answer these questions by collecting and re-analyzing a large, comprehensive sample of previously conducted Randomized Controlled Trials, comprising dozens of development programs and potentially hundreds of different measures of well-being.

Finally, with the results in hand, we will examine what characteristics of programs are predictive of whether a program accomplishes goals (i) and (ii). Our findings will be of direct value to policy makers and academics seeking to design more impactful programs.