Multidimensional Impact Evaluation: The Impact of the Women’s Income Generating Support Program in Northern Uganda

This paper assesses the impact of a human capital and cash transfer intervention on individual disempowerment. Using a randomised controlled trial across 120 villages in Northern Uganda, we take a multidimensional measurement approach to evaluate the impact of Women’s Income Generating Support Program on the empowerment of ultra-poor and conflict-affected women. Building on the findings of Blattman et al. (2016) who find positive effects of the program on microenterprise ownership and income, we investigate the effects of the program on women who were most disempowered through an analysis of the joint distribution of the impacts and the changes in deprivation profiles of the targeted populations. Using a measure of ten indicators in five dimensions, we find that the intervention is successful in reducing the average number of deprivations by 13.6% on average relative to the control group at endline. Our analysis show that the intervention was successful in reducing the incidence and the severity of disempowerment among those who experience it more severely. However, we find that, even at endline, most of the participants in the sample experienced deprivation in at least two of the ten indicators simultaneously and that the group dynamics arm of the program did not have a significant impact on the beneficiaries’ empowerment.