14/04/2026 - 12:45 - Doyen 22

William Parienté

(UCLouvain, LIDAM, IRES)

will give a presentation on 

How Big Does a “Big Push” Need to Be? Evidence from Randomizing Asset Transfer Size

Abstract

Poverty is persistent but the evidence regarding the existence of poverty traps is mixed. In the presence of a poverty trap, only cost-intensive “big push” interventions such as the increasingly popular poverty graduation model can durably improve living standards. We carry out a cluster randomized trial of a graduation program in Upper-Egypt varying experimentally the size of the transfer (between full- and half-transfer), and evaluate these interventions up to 40 months after the start of the intervention. Positive impacts on asset ownership and consumption are sustained over time and remain sizeable at the 40-month mark, for both half- and full-transfer beneficiaries. A test comparing the effect of the half- and full-transfer treatments on post-transfer asset dynamics at different points in the baseline asset distribution yields no support for the presence of an asset-threshold poverty trap in our context.

(With R.Assaad, A.Osman and C.Valente)”

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