Habibou Ibrahim Kassoum (CERDI, UCA)

Habibou Ibrahim Kassoum
CERDI, UCA
Banque mondiale

Coautrices : Julia Vaillant and Kelsey A. Wright

Résumé

Cash transfer and economic inclusion programs increasingly target women to promote gender equality but less is known about how these programs and context affect intimate partner violence (IPV), particularly in fragile settings. This paper studies the effects of Mauritania's national social safety program, Tekavoul, and a complementary economic inclusion intervention designed on top of the existing Tekavoul program on IPV among poor women aged 18–49 in rural areas. The economic inclusion program was cross-randomized across four arms including a lump-sum cash grant ("capital" package), psychosocial interventions ("psychosocial" package), both capital and psychosocial packages ("full" package), and a control group that received Tekavoul cash transfers only. We find that the Tekavoul cash transfer alone has no effect on IPV. We also show that beneficiaries of the full package appear to share part of the additional resources with their partners and reduce the time they spend on household chores which reduce their risk of IPV, whereas women who received the capital package alone show suggestive evidence of an increase in sexual violence. These results provide important policy-relevant evidence that psychosocial components can help mitigate unintended harms from women’s economic empowerment programs.