The Impact of Ethiopia's productive safety net programme and its linkages

Abstract

This paper assesses the impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP), the largest social protection programme in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. Using propensity score matching techniques, we find that the programme has little impact on participants on average, due in part to transfer levels that fell far below programme targets. Participants with access to both the PSNP and packages of agricultural support are more likely to be food secure, to borrow for productive purposes, use improved agricultural technologies, and operate non-farm own business activities. However, beneficiaries did not experience faster asset growth. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.