Measuring Impact: A Meta-Analysis of Oxfam’s Livelihoods Effectiveness Reviews
Overview
This paper presents the results of a meta-analysis examining the overall impact of 23 livelihoods projects evaluated as part of Oxfam GB’s Effectiveness Reviews between 2011 and 2016.
Results show a statistically significant, positive impact on the welfare of participants, measured by household consumption and wealth. Analysis indicates an increase in household consumption of approximately 6.6% (95% confidence interval from 1.6% to 11.9%). While some projects had more positive results than others, these differences are not explained by regions, whether the country has lower-income or middle-income status, whether households were initially poorer than average, nor by project scale, budget or duration.
However, there is some evidence that female-headed households have tended to benefit less from the projects than male-headed households. Projects that targeted a specific agricultural product or products (such as vegetables, coffee or dairy production) were generally found to be successful in promoting production and sales.
Keywords
- Agriculture
- Economic growth
- Enterprise development
- Food production
- Impact evaluation
- Livelihoods
- Meta-analysis
- Monitoring and evaluation
- Propensity score matching
- Quasi-experimental evaluation
- Research methods
- Smallholder agriculture
- Sustainable livelihoods approach
- Value chain
- Welfare
- Women farmers
- Women's Economic Leadership
Additional details
Author(s)
How to cite this resource
Citation styles vary so we recommend you check what is appropriate for your context. You may choose to cite Oxfam resources as follows:
Author(s)/Editor(s). (Year of publication). Title and sub-title. Place of publication: name of publisher. DOI (where available). URL
Our FAQs page has some examples of this approach.
