How far does a big push really push? Long-term effects of an asset transfer program on employment trajectories

Abstract

BRAC launched its Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR-TUP) program in 2002 to address ultrapoverty in Bangladesh using an asset transfer approach combined with multifaceted training over a 2-year period. However, evidence of long-term employment trajectories is limited, and it is crucial to understand whether the program truly has a transformative long-term income effect. We evaluate the long-term impact of TUP on employment using difference-in-differences techniques on panel data from a 9-year period (2002–11). We confirm earlier findings of the positive short-term TUP impact: participants are more likely to switch from less productive occupations (e.g., working as maids, begging, day laboring) to entrepreneurship (up 10 percentage points) and generally maintain these new occupations for the medium term. In the long term, however, a substantial proportion of participating households—especially those with members starting out as beggars or maids, those without adult sons, and those headed by males—are switching back to their lower-income baseline occupations, causing the long-term impact to be smaller (a 5 percentage point increase). As this paper is the first to provide impact estimates over a 9-year period of the TUP program, the findings highlight the need for further research on the causes for this reversal and the extent to which it is found in other settings.