Seminar Summary – The Ultra Poor Graduation Approach and Child Human Capital

Extreme poverty entraps over 719 million people worldwide who live on less than the cost of a cup of coffee in the United States. It is a complex and multifaceted state of living that deprives people of access to basic resources and opportunities. Often, escaping extreme poverty demands a significant amount of capital which individuals do not have and cannot acquire. This leads them to a poverty trap, which refers to an economic system that denies individuals access to economic means, healthcare, education and other capital supporting endeavors. Eventually, children born into families that exist in this economic system inherit the same and become victims of generational poverty.

Children born into the poverty trap are disadvantaged from the start, often lacking proper nutrition, stimulation, and healthcare that contributes to physical and neurocognitive development. As a result, many children do not get the chance to learn and develop in order to break out of the cycle.

The Graduation Approach is a multifaceted program that aims to help the ultra-poor escape the poverty trap with a ‘big push’. It is comprised of the following components: a one-time transfer of an income generating asset (often livestock); monthly cash transfers to support consumption; life skills coaching on topics like health and nutrition; technical skills training on topics like financial literacy; and access to savings services. It has reached households in 50 countries and over 3 million households have received aid from the program. After BRAC’s establishment of the approach, there has been significant research on testing the model and its effects on households with a growing focus on the optimization of the program’s design. However, the question of the model’s impact on human capital improvements among young children and implication for intergenerational poverty cycles is still unknown.

Motivated to fill this knowledge gap, Peter Rockers, Associate Professor of Global Health at Boston University, collaborated with Doug Parkerson at Innovations for Poverty Action to investigate the impact of exposure to the Graduation program from birth on child skills and child human capital. In the second meeting of the Fall 2023 Human Capital Initiative Research Seminar Series on October 25, Rockers presented results from the forthcoming study, which examined the impact of the Graduation Approach on children up to three years of age in Uganda who were born when the program was implemented, or up to one year after.

The study Rockers presented built on a recently completed trial that evaluated the impact of the Graduation Program in refugee and host communities in Uganda, which found strong positive effects on household income, consumption and food security. His team followed up with children born in intervention and control households one year after the initial trial ended, and assessed skill using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, which was translated and adapted for use in Uganda with support from local researchers who have been using the tool for several years. It measures skills in four domains: cognitive, motor, language and social-emotional. In the end, the study found that the Graduation Program had no impact on child skills across any of these domains.

Rockers argued that these results should not be interpreted as definitive evidence that the Graduation Approach does not benefit children. He mentioned that key next steps will include following up with study children at older ages to examine how potential effects manifest and evolve over time. He also aims to examine critical pathways in more detail, such as caregiving practices, nutritional status and brain function. Rockers also plans to explore adaptations to the Graduation Approach to boost child outcomes, for example by integrating a caregiver support intervention or providing nutritional supplements for young children.

Overall, Rockers and colleague’s research in Uganda is a step forward in understanding the impacts of the Graduation Approach. By creating an avenue to understanding potential improvements to the Approach, their work has future potential to contribute to ending cycles of intergenerational poverty.

Never miss an update: subscribe to the Human Capital Initiative newsletter.