@article{fa59c6da130649a48eb5b7c856c892c8,
title = "Do asset transfers build household resilience?",
abstract = "We estimate the impact of an asset transfer program on household resilience. We measure resilience as the probability that a household will sustain at least the threshold asset level required to support consumption above the poverty line. Using six rounds of data collected over 42 months in rural Zambia, we construct a measure of resilience based on households{\textquoteright} conditional welfare distributions to estimate program impacts. We find that the program increased household resilience; beneficiaries{\textquoteright} likelihood of being non-poor in future periods increased by 44%. The program both increased mean assets and decreased variance, signaling an upward shift in households{\textquoteright} conditional asset distributions. Our method demonstrates the added value of the resilience estimation compared with a conventional impact assessment; numerous households classified as non-poor are unlikely to remain non-poor over time and the relationship between wealth and resilience is driven by changes in both the conditional mean and the conditional variance.",
keywords = "Asset transfers, Livestock, Poverty dynamics, Resilience",
author = "Lokendra Phadera and Hope Michelson and Alex Winter-Nelson and Peter Goldsmith",
note = "Funding Information: This research was made possible by a grant from Elanco Animal Health (USA) and by the cooperation of Heifer International. The work was supported by USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture Hatch project 1014548. We thank Heifer International Zambia staff, especially James Kasongo, Joyce Phiri, and Emelda Nanyangwe, and a wonderful team of enumerators. We are grateful for comments from an anonymous referee, Chris Barrett, Jennifer Denno Ciss{\'e} Benjamin Crost, Mary Arends-Kuenning, Kathy Baylis, Rebecca Thornton, Andrew Foster, Jorge Aguero, Brian Dillon, and Elliott Collins. Funding Information: This research was made possible by a grant from Elanco Animal Health (USA) and by the cooperation of Heifer International . The work was supported by USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture Hatch project 1014548 . We thank Heifer International Zambia staff, especially James Kasongo, Joyce Phiri, and Emelda Nanyangwe, and a wonderful team of enumerators. We are grateful for comments from an anonymous referee, Chris Barrett, Jennifer Denno Ciss{\'e}, Benjamin Crost, Mary Arends-Kuenning, Kathy Baylis, Rebecca Thornton, Andrew Foster, Jorge Aguero, Brian Dillon, and Elliott Collins. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 Elsevier B.V. Copyright: Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
year = "2019",
month = may,
doi = "10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.01.003",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "138",
pages = "205--227",
journal = "Journal of Development of Economics",
issn = "0304-3878",
publisher = "Elsevier",
}