Poverty Reduced

Objective of Strategy: Alleviate poverty through interventions targeted at women or the household, including cash transfers, savings, microfinance loans, and labour force interventions.

Evidence of impact:

• Growing evidence from LMICs demonstrates that economic transfers (direct transfer of cash, food or food vouchers) to poor households have the potential to reduce IPV, regardless of the modality of the transfer. In a review of 22 studies on cash transfers and IPV, 70% of studies showed reductions in IPV.
• More evidence is needed from LMICs on whether labour force interventions (e.g. employment programmes, income-generating activities) can lead to reductions in VAW. Evidence that that these interventions can lead to improvements in protective factors such as improved economic wellbeing for women and households.
• Lack of evidence that microfinance or savings interventions alone can lead to reductions in VAW. Some evidence from LMICs has shown increases in VAW. However, interventions combining microfinance/savings with social empowerment interventions have shown promising results in reducing VAW (See Strategy E Empowerment).