An impact evaluation design for the Millennium Villages Project in Northern Ghana

Abstract

This article details the design of an impact evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project in Northern Ghana. The evaluation is particularly challenging because the intervention cannot be randomised; it is clustered in a group of homogeneous communities and likely to generate spill-over effects. We propose a difference-in-differences design selecting control communities based on a propensity score and collecting five rounds of yearly data. We address a number of evaluation questions in relation to testing the breaking of the poverty trap, assessing project externalities, the role of qualitative research, cost-effectiveness and project synergies, sustainability and scalability in the presence of scale economies.