Ghana LEAP 1000 Programme: Baseline Evaluation Report

This report presents results from the baseline survey of the impact evaluation of LEAP 1000 (Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty), a sub-component of the wider Ghana LEAP programme, which explicitly targets poor households with pregnant and lactating women or women with a child under the age of 12 months. The programme will provide cash transfers, initially reaching 6,000 households in ten districts in Northern Ghana. The benefit structure and associated services such as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) enrolment are identical to the main LEAP programme.

The UNICEF Office of Research, the University of Ghana, University of North Carolina and Navrongo Health Research Centre have designed a rigorous mixed-methods impact evaluation to estimate the effects of LEAP 1000. The evaluation compares households which are just below the proxy means test cut-off score (and thus eligible for LEAP) to those just above the cut-off score (and thus not eligible for LEAP). These households are likely to be very similar as they have virtually identical proxy means test scores. The group of households above the cut-off can thus serve as a valid comparison group for households below the cut-off who receive the cash transfers. This evaluation strategy is known as a discontinuity design, as it exploits the discontinuity of eligibility at exactly the cut-off point. The study sample consists of 1,262 households below and 1,235 above the line, for a total of 2,497 households. The qualitative study sample consists of 20 treatment households who were administered in-depth interviews.