Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Narayan Das, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul, Munshi Sulaimany (March 2016) We study how women’s choices over labor activities in village economies correlate with poverty and whether enabling the poorest women to take on the activities of their richer counterparts can set them on a sustainable trajectory out of poverty…
Wameq A Raza, Ellen Van de Poel (April 2016) Evidence shows that ultra-poor households are typically unable to participate in mainstream poverty alleviation programmes. In response, an international NGO called BRAC in Bangladesh implemented the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeted Ultra-Poor (CFPR: TUP) programme that explicitly targets those living below…
Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak and Anton Heil (March 2020) There are two views as to why people stay poor. The equal opportunity view emphasizes that differences in individual traits like talent or motivation make poor people choose low productivity jobs. The poverty traps view emphasizes that access to opportunities depends on … Continued
This case study explores BRAC’s experience evolving the graduation approach over the last 20 years, paying special attention to the lessons for governments and NGOs alike that have emerged from the most recent periods of implementation. Specifically, this case study looks at how, since the program started in 2002, BRAC has sought to ensure high … Continued
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth presents a multitude of articles all focused on various aspects of the Graduation approach and programming, including a piece written by BRAC’s own members of the Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative team entitled “What does the future hold for graduation?” International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) (November 2017)
In the fall of 2019 we were honored to join with others committed to bringing the slogan “leave no one behind” to life in the new book Leave No One Behind: Time for Specifics on the Sustainable Development Goals, published this fall by the Japan International Cooperation Research Institute (JICA) and the Global Economy and … Continued
People in ultra-poverty make up over half of the estimated 797 million people living in extreme poverty around the world (Reed et al. 2017, 4). This group tends to be food insecure, typically excluded from mainstream services and programs, including formal market systems and financial services, and in some contexts live in isolated and hard-to-reach … Continued
See how BRAC is reaching the poorest with an innovative set of interventions that creates a ladder out of extreme poverty.
Atiya Rahman and Oriana Bandiera (March 2021) Under normal conditions, BRAC’s flagship Graduation approach aiming to alleviate poverty was proven to be highly successful at giving the poorest women in some of the poorest areas of Bangladesh the tools to escape the poverty trap (Balboni et al., 2021; Bandiera et al., 2017). Pilots of the … Continued
In 2002 we pioneered the Graduation approach – a holistic sequence of interventions that helps people escape the poverty trap for good. When LSE researchers found 95 percent of participants in Bangladesh continued improving their living standards seven years after the intervention ended, we knew Graduation had the potential to transform lives.