Cash, control and commitment: evidence on female empowerment from the National Cash Transfer Program in Pakistan

We use a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impacts of Pakistan’s National Cash Transfer Program (BISP) on empowerment of its recipient women using nationally representative program evaluation panel data on treatment and control households. As empowerment is a latent variable, it is operationalized using agency and its three domains, including access and control over resources, decision-making and mobility. We find that the recipient women in beneficiary households are making more sole and joint decisions and are more economically active in comparison to women who do not receive BISP, though we were unable to find significant impacts of the program on women’s mobility. On the whole, only modest changes in women’s access and control over resources, participation in decision-making and mobility among beneficiaries were estimated.