Impact of the SADA-Northern Ghana Millennium Village Project on Multidimensional Poverty: A Comparison of Dashboard and Index Approaches

This paper assesses the impact of the SADA-Northern Ghana Millennium Village Project (MVP) on multidimensional poverty using dashboard and index approaches. Using a unique, large dataset that spans five years and contains data on multiple welfare indicators, we estimate the impact of MVP on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and on the global multidimensional poverty index (global MPI). We find that the project had a limited impact on the MDGs and yet a positive impact on the global MPI. We assess the robustness of the impact of MVP on the global MPI, and we conclude that it was largely driven by the sensitivity of the index to changes in a few MDG indicators. We conclude that the MVP had a limited impact on welfare and that the global MPI should be used with caution in the evaluation of development programmes.

Citation: Masset, E. and García Hombrados, J. (2019): ‘Impact of the SADA-Northern Ghana Millennium Village Project on multidimensional poverty: A comparison of dash-board and index approaches’. OPHI Working Paper 130, University of Oxford.

Also published in World Development, 2021, vol. 137, 105162.