Effectiveness of the Public Livelihood Programmes on the Demand for Education, Health and Water Services in Uganda: A Case of Sustainable Livelihood Pilot

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to establish the extent to which the Sustainable Livelihood Pilot (SLP) project was effective in promoting welfare of the target poor households and particularly to ascertain the extent to which the intervention has improved demand for social services at household level. The assessment was premised on the livelihoods approach that serves as an instrument for investigating the poor peoples' livelihoods. The analysis was based on consumption expenditure model built; the beneficiary incidence analysis to measure the benefits derived from public spending to the households in social services of education, health and water. The analysis established there were significant (at 1%) changes in household incomes in the SLP project hosting districts in Uganda. Further, there were significant increases in the mean spending in total, and by sector for education, health and water, and more so percent changes on education services are higher than water and health. It was noted that the SLP intervention significantly impacted on household budgets in that individuals that accessed the grant significantly improved their budgets on education (by 42.3%), health (by 26.4%) and water (by 48.2%) respectively as compared to the base period. The project targeted mainly women to respond to global strategies of improving demand financing through women empowerment.