Socioeconomic and Health Impacts Evaluation of Collective Welfare Grids in Pakistan

Abstract

The study has assessed the welfare impacts of unconditional cash transfers of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) by using impact evaluation panel surveys conducted in 2016 (baseline) and 2019 (follow-up round). The panel survey contains information from both the beneficiary and non-beneficiary households, selected through a proxy means test (PMT) formula. The research has measured the welfare impacts of unconditional cash assistance across and over time where welfare has been defined by various socioeconomic indicators, including per-adult equivalent monthly consumption, headcount poverty, multidimensional poverty index (MPI) and child deprivation index (CDI). The results indicate that BISP cash assistance has a positive impact on household consumption while conducting the cross-sectional analysis; however, benefiting households are until facing high rates of poverty as the majority of them have not been transited out of poverty. No sustained welfare impact has been found, as the impacts of quarterly cash assistance on MPI and CDI are not significant in our cross-sectional analysis. The panel analysis shows that the recipient households' economic well-being has improved as measured through consumption and child deprivation indices.