Pakistan | The Impact Initiative

Women empowerment, social norms and domestic violence

Domestic violence (DV) affects 30% of women worldwide and more than 50% of women living in conflict or post-conflict communities. The prevention of DV is important, not only because it is a violation of women's rights and freedoms, but also because DV negatively affects economic growth and perpetuates structural poverty.

Facilitating innovative growth of low cost private schools: experimental evidence from Pakistan

Most interventions to improve education in developing countries require spending significant amounts of money on improving the quality of the inputs to the education system. While this is often a useful approach, in countries with weak governments and low tax collection, little resources are available to invest in schools.

Strengthening schools accountability mechanisms through participation: addressing education quality and equity in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Disadvantaged children in Low Income Countries (LICs) particularly children with disabilities are increasingly accessing schools, but not learning effectively due to social exclusion within the classroom and poor teaching methods, that perpetuate inequality.

A market stall holder in northern Uganda

Basic entrepreneurship: a means for transforming the economic lives of the poor?

The world's poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. This project examines randomised evaluations of an innovative anti-poverty program which tackles capital and skills constraints at the same time in an effort to encourage occupational change among the world’s poorest women.

Female Labour Supply and the Escape from Poverty: New evidence from household data

This study utilizes household survey data from four African and Asian countries to examine in depth, and on a comparable basis, the evolving nature of female labour supply in low income countries over the past two to three decades, and to analyse the links with poverty reduction.

Economic Recovery in Post-Conflict Cities: the Role of the Urban Informal Economy

The role of the urban informal economy in poverty-reduction and peace-building in five post-conflict cities with different experiences: institutional struggles for state control, economic conflict over control of resources, social/political control and emergent governance.

Pupils attending deaf school in Sri Lanka

Learning outcomes and teacher effectiveness for children facing multiple disadvantages, including those with disabilities: India and Pakistan

The research delivers an in-depth understanding of the problems that teachers face supporting students from diverse backgrounds, the teaching practices they adopt, and the kinds of support they need to help all children fulfill their learning potential.

Stigma and discrimination associated with TB in Asia

TB remains the single biggest killer of adults in the world - someone dies of TB every 15 seconds, nearly all in developing countries. TB particularly affects the poor. TB is a highly stigmatised disease - that is, TB patients are despised and shunned by the public. This adversely affects their lives, leading to isolation and depression, and limits their access to diagnosis and treatment. Up until now, the causes of this stigma and discrimination have not been properly studied.

Picture: mcandrea licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Shame, social exclusion and the effectiveness of anti-poverty programmes: A study in seven countries

The research examines Amartya Sen's contention that shame is an attribute of poverty in all societies. Shame is believed to reduce a person's agency, the capacity to act constructively, and to increase social exclusion which, in turn, curtail economic development.

Tropical forests in poverty alleviation: from household data to global-comparative analysis

Forests are crucial to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of poor people worldwide, but just how important, and for what functions? Can they help lift people out of poverty, or are they mainly useful as gap-fillers and safety nets in response to shocks? Are certain types of forest-tenure and management regimes more favourable than others? And under what conditions can increased integration into forest-product markets help?