The document summarizes an impact evaluation of the Red UNIDOS program in Colombia, which aims to alleviate extreme poverty through psychosocial support, improved social services, and institutional capacity building. The evaluation found: 1) The program did not significantly impact most measures of empowerment, except reducing job informality in urban areas for both men and women. 2) Qualitative work revealed challenges providing income generation strategies for rural women as opportunities and education are barriers to finding jobs. 3) Issues with program implementation like caseloads and quality of local operators as well as lack of rural social services and jobs may have limited the program's effectiveness.

1. Extreme poverty, displacement and female empowerment: Evidence from an impact evaluation of Red UNIDOS in Colombia
Susana Martínez-Restrepo, PhD.
Fedesarrollo
Juan Camilo Mejía
Fedesarrollo and Los Andes University
Erika Enríquez
Fedesarrollo

2. Motivation and BackgroundExtreme poverty and displacement in Colombia

3. Currently, 30.6% of Colombia’s population lives under the poverty line and 9.1% under extreme poverty
Extreme poverty is always higher in rural areas (19.1%) vs. 6% in medium and large cities. Women represent 31% of the extreme poor in cities while men, 28.8%.
While labor force participation in urban areas is 57.8% among women, it is 74.5% among men.
By 2012 it was estimated that there were 3,943,500 individuals displaced by violence, which is about 8% of Colombia’s population.

4. People living in extreme poverty and those displaced by violence to urban areas frequently have multiple needs:
1.Psychological
2.Social
3.Economic
4.Empowerment (to take action to make the necessary changes in their lives)
Requires a wide range of coordinated services from multiple areas (education, health, identification, income generation) and support from many fronts (service supply, preferential service access, and psychosocial support).

5. Recent wave of ambitious programmes aimed at alleviating extreme poverty in Latin America
Middle income countries (extreme poverty ~ 15% in Colombia, ~ 10% in Brazil, ~ 5% in Chile)
Beyond CCT
Beneficiaries hard to reach
Chile Solidario(Chile)
Introduced in 2002
Includes (small) CCT element, preferential access to public services and 5-year socio-pyschologicalsupport
Quasi-experimental evaluation using administrative and survey data
Carneiro, Galasso, Ginja2009; Amior, Carneiro, Galassoand Ginja2011
Positive effects on employment, and take up of subsidies and employment programmes
Heterogeneous impacts (rural vsurban, gender of head of household, municaplity, social workers)
BrasilsemMiseria(Brasil): Introduced in December 2011
Unidos(Colombia): Introduced in 2007, modelled after Chile Solidario

6. 2. Red UNIDOS Strategy

7. Large scale and very ambitious program to target the hardest to reach households
Objective is achieved through a three-arm strategy
1.Intensive period of psychosocial support up to 5 years, provided by trained social workers (to enable self-development and function as part of society)
2.Social services –promoting preferential treatment and improving the supply (quantity and quality)
3.Improving institutional capacity of local governments
•Eligibility : poorest 1.5 million households as of March 2008:
–SISBEN 1 families –maximum of 1.2 million households
–Displaced households (RegistroÚnicode PoblaciónDesplazada) –300,000 households
•First introduced in 2007 –pilot in 37 municipalities
•As of May 2012: serving majority of targeted families
•5 million people
•45% in rural areas
•94% of municipalities
•10,000 social workers

8. Households objectives –reach some minimum conditions necessary to overcome extreme poverty
45 ‘logrosbasicos‘
9 dimensions
1.Identification
2.Income and work
3.Education and training
4.Health
5.Nutrition
6.Housing conditions
7.Family dynamic
8.Banking and savings
9.Access to justice

9. 3. Literature review

10. Typically, the variables that have been used across contexts to measure empowerment have been education, employment, and participation in community programs. Employment allows women to earn an income, with a resulting positive impact on the social standing of women within the household and in society (Sen, 1999, p. 191).
According to Agarwal(1997), what determines the equality or inequality of bargaining power is the fallback position of individuals. In the context of intra-household bargaining, an individual’s fallback position is largely determined by access to economic assets, which is directly tied to the capability of being able to survive outside of the household (Sen, 1981).
Molyneuxdefines women’s empowerment as acquiring capabilities with the goal of assisting women in achieving autonomy (legal and material), equality (social and personal, i.e., status and self-esteem), as well as voice and influence over decisions that affect their lives (Molyneux, 2008).
Employment allows women to earn an income, with a resulting positive impact on the social standing of women within the household and in society (Sen, 1999, p. 191).
In terms of education, there is evidence that access to education improves women’s capacity to question, to reflect on, and to gain access to information and make changes in their lives (Kabeer, 2005, p. 16).

11. 4. Research Questions
1. What is the impact of Red UNIDOS on Women empowerment measured as labor market participation, intra-household bargaining and decision making, community leadership?
2. What factors also matter for that decision? Childcare, street violence, transportation, job quality (formal vs. informal jobs).

12. 5. Methods

13. Experimental design
77 municipalities (representative of the entire country)
Cluster randomization: each municipality divided into several neighborhoods(clusters)
Cohorts: Neighbourhoods are randomly allocated to four groups (1 –4)
Treatment commences at different times for each cohort
More than one year elapses between cohort 1 and 4
Cohort 1 = treatment, Cohort 4 = control.
Randomisation should ensure balance of characteristics.
Treatment group further subdivided between ‘classic’ and ‘intense’
Intense treatment group receives more visits (lower caseloads for social workers)
Social worker randomly assigned to neighbourhood, then randomly assigned to type of treatment
Incomplete take-up/contaminated controls:
–~30% (11%) of households randomly assigned to treatment group had received no official (self- reported) visits at follow-up
–~0% (70%) control received official (self-reported) visits at follow-up
–Under certain assumptions recover ITT using IV: real treatment is instrumented using random assignment
–Original treatment group received 2 (3) official (self-reported) visits on average at follow-up (not enough to get an impact) Likely to find no effect at all
Evaluation design

14. Our data contains a treatment group of 3972 households and 5382 individuals and a control group of 1946 household and 2719 individuals in 77 municipalities.
The total sample size used for the analysis was 5918 households and 8101 individuals.
The baseline was collected, and the follow-up at the end of 2009 and beginnings of 2011.
Due to project implementation challenges that contaminated the control group (visits received from the CogestoresSociales), for this we use Instrumental Variables Techniques as the main identification model. In order to address this selectivity problem and unobserved variable bias, the literature suggests the use of the instrumental variable approach should enable the assumptions of exogenous variation in the treatment (Murnane& Willett, 2010).

18. The model implemented takes the following form:
Where yihtIs the result variable for the individual iin the household hin period t, ThtIs the indicator of the treatment, it is one if the household reported more than two visits from the cogestor, Xiht'is a vector of exogenous covariates in an individual level for period t, and zht_1'is a vector of covariates in a household level for the period t-1. Our interest is concentrated in β1.
There was contamination in Tht, the way in which we can still use this treatment is instrumenting it, using a variable that has correlation with the treatment but no relation with the outcome variable. What is going to be used is Dht, which indicates whether the household was assigned to the classic or intense treatment group. The latter has correlation with Thtand was randomly assigned so it can be used as follows:
It is important to note that there can be an important problem with this variable since people that were part of the strategy had some trouble identifying the cogestoreswith people from other programs such as “familiasen acción”, “jóvenesen acción”, “oportunidadesrurales”, etc.

19. In the first stage Thtis obtained and in the second stage the indicator or achievement is modeled as a function of the exogenous component of the real treatment and its interaction with the period. Again, β3would represent the impact of the strategy. At first this element should also be instrumented in the first stage, but, the estimated value would be t multiplied by the estimated value of T, so they are equivalent equations, which can be estimated as one.

20. 6. Results(1) Quantitative(2) Qualitative

21. Quantitative Outcomes

26. (2) CualitativeMethods (Triadasde Amigas)
Cali and DaguaValle/ Medellin and Angostura Antioquia and Bogota

27. LABOR URBAN* Positive Reduction of Job Informality
Some of women interviewed expressed that they value the fact that on informal jobs, schedules are flexible so they can manage their time.
Jobs in the formal sector usually have strict schedules that are difficult to fulfill given that most of them have family responsibilities.
They also expressed their dissatisfaction with long workdays, income instability, low wages, and mistreat by the employers, especially for women working as housemaids.
The unpredictable income limits their possibility to contribute to cover household expenses

28. LABOR DISPLACED-No significant results
In the focus groups there were differences on women’s perceptions about the program between displaced and non-displaced population, overall in access to housing programs.
Some of women who are displaced mentioned that they received support for housing before they belonged to Red Unidos.
Usually, displaced women interviewed said they were beneficiaries from other social assistance programs different from Unidos.
Since Unidoscoordinates services from multiple areas, sometimes for beneficiaries is not that clear where the assistance is coming from, they might be contacted through Unidosbut the service is delivered directly by other institutions or programs
LABOR RURAL-No significant results
Women reported non having labor opportunities locally. The program limited their actions regarding income regeneration strategies to men, and to having diversified orchards to improve food security

29. Intra-household decision making process regarding participation in the labor market, education, health and control of resources.
Women suggested that working contributes to their independence, to strength their confidence and to improve their bargaining power in the household.
In general, women who work and are able to contribute to the household feel more autonomous and freer, because they are not economically dependent on anybody.
When having and income it is easier for them to participate in household decision-making regarding food or any other kind of things they or their children need.
Additionally, some of them expressed that they felt empowered in other dimensions since to work allows them to learn, to progress, to interact with other people and to be useful for their communities.
Programs that give women access to information about their rights and how they can defend themselves also help them to avoid domestic violence and to be more confident to denounce when they have been abused.

30. 7. Conclusions and Policy Implications

31. RedUNIDOSdidnotshowsignificantimpactonanyoftheempowermentmeasuresused,exceptforinformalityonurbanareasforbothmenandwomen.
Issueswiththedesign
1.Qualitativework,showedthattheprogramhasmajorchallengeswithincomegenerationstrategiesonwomenparticularlyonruralareas.
2.Issuessuchasopportunities,educationareaproblemtofindjobs,andtheseareworkedbytheProgram.
3.EconomicsofCareisnotincludedintheprogram,andrepresentsoneofthemajorobstaclesforwomen’sjobparticipation:Theopportunitycostcreatedbythecareofchildrenandgrandchildren,costandtimeoftransportationtoavailablejobs.Thepreferenceofmostwomenistohavesmall-informalentrepreneurshipsathome.

32. Issues with program implementation
1.Number of Families per CogestorSocial
2.CogestoresSocialeswages, education and experience
3.Quality of local operators (Funof, Medellin Solidario)
4.Lack of social services and job opportunities in rural areas
* Follow up data (2011) gathered only after 18 months of the baseline

33. THANKS