Distributional Impacts of Cash Transfers on the Multidimensional Poverty of Refugees: The ESSN program in Turkey

Most evaluation exercises of humanitarian cash transfer programs use traditional metrics of poverty and study average effects of intended outcomes separately. We analyze the impact of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) cash program on the multidimensional poverty of refugees in Turkey, using a purpose-build Refugee Multidimensional Poverty Index. We conduct a nuanced causal analysis of the distributional impacts of the ESSN on the incidence and intensity of multidimensional poverty, and decompose effects for separate dimensions of poverty. Results show that the ESSN successfully reached the poor and significantly reduced overall multidimensional poverty among its beneficiaries. Significant reductions are found in the dimensions of food security, living standards and education. Incidence and intensity of poverty are shown to fall across the entire distribution. This supports emerging claims that these types of programs, still relatively new in humanitarian contexts, can be transformative for their beneficiaries to achieve multiple outcomes simultaneously. Reductions in the intensities for more deprived households stand out as a finding that outcome specific evaluations and multidimensional impact evaluations focusing on estimating average treatment effect would have missed, demonstrating the added value of the proposed methodological innovation to focus on the entire distribution of deprivation in this paper. By learning from the largest humanitarian cash program in the world, results provide important lessons for cash programs on multidimensional poverty of refugees elsewhere.

About the Speaker:

Matthew Robson works part-time at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) as a Research Assistant. He has worked on a range of projects since 2014, including: refugee multidimensional poverty indices, mismatches between poverty indexes and changes in poverty over time. He is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of York, working within the Equity in Health Policy (EQUIPOL) research group to develop methods to evaluate the causal impacts of interventions on health inequalities. His research interests also span experimental and behavioural economics, where he focuses on prosocial behaviour and inequality aversion. For more information, see his website: https://mrobson92.com/

About the Discussant:

Josefin Pasanen joined the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) research team in 2020. She brings a background in research, monitoring and evaluation, and capacity building for high-impact policy design. She has a strong interest in translating research into policy innovation. Prior to joining HDRO, Josefin was head of Capacity building at the global research center Poverty Action Lab’s (J-PAL) office for Latin America and the Caribbean, working to strengthen government, NGO and private sector capacities for evidence-based policies and programs across the region. A development economist by training, she holds an MSc in Local Economic Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BSc in Economics and Political Science from Uppsala University. Her research and policy interests center on data for development, sustainability and social inclusion, poverty alleviation, inequalities, gender and labour markets. Josefin’s previous experience also includes research at the Swedish Agency for Public Management and the Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy, and policy advisory for the Mayor ́s office at the City of Stockholm.