Randomized Impact Evaluation of Afghanistan's National Solidarity Programme : Final Report
The National Solidarity Programme (NSP) is the largest development program in Afghanistan. Since its inauguration in 2003, NSP has established 32,000 Community Development Councils (CDCs) across 361 districts in all of Afghanistan's 34 provinc...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Other Rural Study |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/07/18273450/randomized-impact-evaluation-afghanistans-national-solidarity-programme http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16637 |
| Summary: | The National Solidarity Programme (NSP)
is the largest development program in Afghanistan. Since its
inauguration in 2003, NSP has established 32,000 Community
Development Councils (CDCs) across 361 districts in all of
Afghanistan's 34 provinces and has financed nearly
65,000 development projects. NSP seeks to improve the access
of rural villagers to basic services and to create a
foundation of village governance based on democratic
processes and female participation. The program is
structured around two major village-level interventions: 1)
the creation of a gender-balanced CDC through a
secret-ballot, universal suffrage election; and 2) the
disbursement of block grants, valued at $200 per household
up to a community maximum of $60,000, to fund village-level
projects selected, designed, and managed by the CDC in
consultation with villagers. The NSP Impact Evaluation
(NSP-IE) is a multi-year randomized control trial designed
to measure the effects of implementation of the second phase
of NSP on a broad range of economic, political, and social
indicators. While there have been a number of qualitative
studies of NSP, the NSP-IE is the first large-sample
quantitative assessment capable of providing rigorous
estimates of program impact. The study tests a series of
hypotheses which examine the impacts at midline and end line
of NSP on the access of villagers to utilities, services and
infrastructure; on the economic welfare of villagers; on
local governance; on political attitudes and state-building;
and on social norms. NSP improves the access of villagers to
basic utilities. NSP also increases access to education,
health care, and counseling services for women. As NSP does
not usually fund such services, these impacts arise
indirectly from other changes induced by NSP. NSP increases
girls' school attendance and their quality of learning,
but there is no impact on boys' school attendance. NSP
also increases child doctor and prenatal visits and the
probability that an illness or injury is attended to by a
medical professional, although does not affect other health
outcomes. Finally, NSP raises the proportion of women who
have a group or person with whom they can discuss their
problems. NSP-funded utilities projects deliver substantial
increases in access to drinking water and electricity, but
infrastructure projects are less effective. |
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