This article was originally published on VoxDev on February 16, 2023.
People living in extreme poverty face multiple kinds of deprivation. Lack of capital, limited skills, and distance to markets are often some of the first factors that come to mind. Recognising these intersecting barriers, the ‘graduation’ model was originally designed by the non-profit organisation BRAC to deliver several interventions at once: a stipend, a productive asset, livelihoods training, and savings groups. A coach also provides guidance to participants about livelihoods and offers some psychosocial support. This programme has been found to be robustly effective across settings (Banerjee et al. 2015, Bandiera et al. 2017), with sustained and even growing impacts over time (Banerjee et al. 2021).
