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Session Title: Complementary Approaches to Evaluating Social Safety Nets at the World Bank
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Panel Session 539 to be held in REPUBLIC A on Friday, Nov 12, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM
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Sponsored by the International and Cross-cultural Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Cheryl Gray, World Bank, cgary@worldbank.org
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| Abstract:
This session will illustrate the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group’s (IEG) approach to evaluating the World Bank’s support to social safety nets world-wide. Specifically, the panel will demonstrate the various building blocks of the evaluation, the main themes of questions posed and the approaches used in addressing the questions. The presentations will explore how different qualitative and quantitative methods complement each other to provide a rich set of evidence.
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Evaluating Social Safety Nets at the World Bank: Evaluation Questions and Approaches
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| Jennie Litvack, World Bank, jlitvack@worldbank.org
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This presentation will provide an overview of evaluation of the World Bank’s support for social safety nets. It lays out how the main themes of evaluation questions were formed and it will discuss the various methods used and the rationale for the approaches taken to conduct the study. The objective of this presentation is to establish how complementary approaches help to derive the evaluative findings and conclusions, and specifically how the use of multiple approaches strengthened the evaluation design. The presentation will cover a range of approaches, including lending portfolio analysis, a review of analytical work, in-depth special papers, country case studies, and impact evaluations. Ms. Litvack is the task manager for the overall evaluation.
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Evaluating Social Safety Nets at the World Bank: Country Case Studies – The Case of Jamaica
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| Victoria Monchuk, World Bank, vmonchuk@worldbank.org
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The overall evaluation conducted 32 country cases including special studies in Turkey, Indonesia, Colombia, Ethiopia and Jamaica. They cases assessed how Bank assistance supported the development of SSNs in the country, the appropriateness of the support in relation to poverty, government resources, and outcomes of the support. The second presentation is based on the Jamaica case study and includes in-depth evaluations of two Bank-supported projects which both had SSN objectives. One project supported SSN reform and formation of a conditional cash transfer program. The other supported the Jamaica Social Investment Fund in upgrading social infrastructure and creating temporary employment in poor communities. The presentation will show how the study evaluated the effectiveness of Bank support at the country level in Jamaica and how the use of case studies contributes to the overall assessment of Bank support for SSNs world-wide. Ms. Monchuk coordinated the case studies and undertook the Jamaica study.
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Evaluating Social Safety Nets at the World Bank: Impact Evaluation for Assessing Sustainability of Program Effects – The Case of Colombia
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| Javier Baez, World Bank, jbaez@worldbank.org
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The final presentation discusses how impact evaluations contribute to responding to the major evaluation questions. It discusses the impact evaluation of “Familias en Accion”, a Colombian SSN program that transfers cash to the poorest households conditional on certain household behaviors. Previous evaluations of the program have found positive short-term impacts on a variety of intermediate outcomes. Little is known, however, about the impacts of the program in the middle- and long-term. This study uses a variety of quasi-experimental designs together with household surveys, poverty censuses and administrative data to shed light on this issue. In particular, it investigates whether the positive effects attributed to the program in the short-term also led to improvements in school achievement and cognitive development over time. Finally, the approaches employed in this study provide insights into different research strategies for long-term evaluations facing similar data constraints. Mr. Baez managed and undertook the impact evaluation work
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