The Women’s Income Generating Support (WINGS) program is a collaborative research and development program between IPA and AVSI in northern Uganda.
(Read about the project and research in the New York Times Freakonomics blog!)
WINGS is helping 1,800 persons–primarily highly vulnerable young women–to develop microenterprises after several years of war and internal displacement. Through in-depth qualitative research, behavioral games, and a randomized impact evaluation, the WINGS program and study will answer crucial development questions, including:
- Can small grants programs help the most vulnerable women develop sustainable livelihoods?
- What are the contributions of business skills, capital, and social networks to microenterprise success?
- What are the determinants of entrepreneurship among the most vulnerable?
- What is the link between economic activity and women’s empowerment, status, and political participation?
- What are the indirect effects of earned income on child health and education?
- What role do risk attitudes, impulsiveness, altruism, trust, and public-mindedness play in group and poverty dynamics?
Principal Researchers
- Jeannie Annan
- Chris Blattman
- Eric Green
- Julian Jamison
Background & Program
Twenty years of war and widespread displacement have left virtually the entire population of northern Uganda impoverished. Social networks that traditionally cared for the most vulnerable in this region are greatly overstretched. Those marginalized from kin and their communities are at-risk both economically and socially. Young women and girls in particular have suffered economically and educationally from the war.
It will take many years for households to build up assets and livestock and achieve pre-war levels of productivity and income. A major worry is that the most vulnerable households will not be able to develop and maintain livelihoods and income without assistance that targets their specific needs, including provision of skills, capital, and social networks.
Over the past four years AVSI has developed an innovative program intervention aimed at transitioning between humanitarian and development assistance in a post-conflict environment. This recently completed program of micro-enterprise development presents an excellent model for assisting the large number of extremely vulnerable young women, especially young mothers, in northern Uganda.
There are four components to the program: brief business skill training (BST), group formation and dynamics training, an individual start-up grant, and regular follow-up by field staff.
Evaluation strategy
The evaluation will employ a phase-in of program beneficiaries over three years. No vulnerable household or individual will be identified and surveyed without eventually receiving full assistance. All 1,800 beneficiaries will be assessed and identified in advance, with assignment to phase 1 or 2 of the program performed by lottery.
The evaluation strategy involves pre- and post-program surveys of those who have received the program in Phase 1 of the program and those who are eligible to receive the program in Phase 2, approximately 12 to 18 months after the first group of women receives the program. Thus the evaluation strategy uses beneficiaries intended for Phase 2 as a comparison group for Phase 1 beneficiaries.
Innovations in behavioral measurement
Finally, behavioral games measure risk attitudes, time preferences, in-group trust, honesty, in-group altruism, group coordination, and in-group public goods contributions at both baseline and endline. The games have three goals:
1) to associate game behavior with individual characteristics (e.g. are wealthier individuals more risk-averse?);
2) to correlate game behavior with long term outcomes (e.g. do more patient individuals benefit most from business skills?); and
3) as an outcome measure itself (e.g. does group formation increase the level of trust and cooperation?).
Since few studies have used this type of behavioral instrument in such a setting, we hope to also provide the necessary validation for similar future research efforts.
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