The Project
The Zambia Social Recovery Program (SRP) began in 1991 and is administered by Ministry of Finance. The resources are disbursed fairly equally across regions and the program relies on self-targeting to reach poorer areas. The pre-supposition is that the activities that the fund can support—such as rehabilitation of primary schools and health facilities—means the fund will end up targeting less-affluent societies. The fund also supports basic economic infrastructure such as rural roads, bridges, marketplaces, and water and sanitation systems.
The Impact Evaluation Results
The evaluation found that the project:
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raised school attendance by 5-10% in urban areas
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raised the proportion of pupils attending school at the appropriate age by 48%
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raised by 18% the proportion of households’ earnings spent on education
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raised by 20% the likelihood of a household reporting sickness. This could be because the health interventions raised health awareness
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reduced diarrhea incidence by 39%
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increased BCG vaccinations per child by 5%
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increased DPT vaccinations per child by 8-12%
The Impact Evaluation Method
The impact evaluation used two methodologies: pipeline comparison and propensity score matching (PSM). With the former method, communities already in receipt of the fund (the treatment group) were compared with communities who had been approved for a fund-supported project, but had not yet received the funding. With the PSM method, the communities in receipt of the fund were compared to a comparison group of communities not in receipt of funding, but having a similar likelihood (propensity) of being eligible for funding, given their observable characteristics.
Please refer to publication (pdf) for more information.
The above text is a summary of information taken from the PREM Group’s Impact Evaluation Website. For information on completed and ongoing impact evaluations for all regions click here.
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