Can Empowerment be Enhanced by Putting Cash in the Hands of Poor Women? Learning from Pakistan’s BISP Program

Abstract

The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) is the large-scale public sector program in Pakistan that targets the poor women by providing unconditional cash transfers. In this paper, we have analyzed the impact of BISP’s cash transfers on women’s empowerment after two, five, and eight years of intervention. Women’s empowerment is defined by four dimensions including women’s mobility, decision-making, political voice, and spousal violence. The impact is measured by using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design for cross-sectional data and a difference-in-difference approach for panel data. The results reveal that after two years of intervention, there was no significant impact on women’s empowerment; however, after 5 and 8 years, there was a substantial impact, especially on women’s mobility, their involvement in decision-making, and voting behavior. The biometric payment also helped women to go outside home and control on cash herself. Despite the positive impact on women’s mobility and political voice, a mild impact is found on women’s bargaining power and gender norms i.e., involving women in decision-making by their husbands and violence against women.