Building upon extensive collaboration between social fund staff, World Bank teams and national and international researchers, this 2001 study marks the first attempt to conduct a systematic, cross-country impact analysis of social funds. The research carried out in Armenia, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and Zambia addresses four fundamental questions: social funds ability to reach the poor, social funds impact on living standards, the quality and sustainability of social fund infrastructure investments, finally the social fund costs compare to institutions undertaking similar investments. The research is based on a rigorous impact evaluation methodology to compare the outcomes of communities that undertook social fund investments to the outcomes experienced by control or comparison groups that establish the counterfactual state of what would have occurred in the absence of the social fund investment. The report also marks the first cross-country incidence analysis of social fund beneficiaries using household survey data to compare the poverty levels of social fund beneficiaries to national poverty distributions. The results of the research reveal that social funds have met the broad objectives they were designed to address and have made important contributions to improving welfare.
Bibliography: Rawlings, Laura, Lynne Sherburne-Benz and Julie Van Domelen. Draft 2001. "Letting Communities Take the Lead: A Cross-Country Evaluation of Social Fund Performance." World Bank, Washington, DC.
