Zambia’s Multiple Category Cash Transfer Program: Baseline Report

In 2011, Zambia’s Ministry of Community Development, Women and Child Health began implementing the Multiple Categorical cash transfer program in two districts. An impact evaluation with experimental design accompanied the program in order to learn its effects on recipients and provide evidence for making decisions about the future of the program. AIR was contracted by UNICEF Zambia to design and implement a randomized, controlled trial for a three-year impact evaluation of the program and to conduct the necessary data collection, analysis, and reporting.

The primary goals of this baseline report are to describe the sample developed for the evaluation and the approach to random assignment, assess targeting, check for equivalence between the treatment and control groups, and estimate potential effects of the program on outcomes by using statistical models that link outcomes to income and other factors. Developing predictions in advance of program effects allows us to state up front the hypothesized results, thus providing a benchmark against which results can be compared.