The poorest of the poor can be helped with a programme that includes providing goats, sheep, chickens or other livestock and training in how to make money from them, a large six-nation study that includes India said.
That approach didn't wipe out poverty for participants, but they became "significantly less poor," said economist Dean Karlan of Yale University and the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action.
"There's no panacea," Karlan said, but the approach is "better than anything else I'm aware of."
Karlan and colleagues conducted an independent evaluation of the anti-poverty strategy, which is widely used in Bangladesh, to see if it would work in a variety of settings. Their review included more than 10,000 households in Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan and Peru.
Results were published today by the journal Science. The assessment focused on the poorest within villages. About half the households had incomes that translate to earning less than USD 1.25 per person a day in the United States.
Key components of the programs include providing assets like livestock and training in how to manage them, a regular stipend to provide basic support, and encouragement to save money.
To evaluate the programme, the study randomly assigned eligible households to participate or not, and then compared the outcomes for the two groups over three years.
Most of the programme's activity was in the first few months. At the two-year mark, when the programme ended, the participating group was doing better across a wide range of measures.
