A Productive Safety Net for Northern Kenya's Arid and Semi-Arid Lands: The HSNP+ Program

Problem & Objective
The Hunger Safety Net Program (HSNP) will be launched later this year in Northern Kenya, and will provide reliable cash transfers to poor households. Given the considerable risk faced by households in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) of Kenya, theory and empirical evidence both suggest that there may be considerable value added from augmenting HSNP with a productive safety net (PSN). The addition of the PSN can have three key effects: 1) stem the downward spiral of vulnerable households into poverty, 2) stabilizing pathways from poverty through asset accumulation, and 3) crowd-in finance for ancillary investment and growth. To achieve these impacts, a PSN needs to reliable and predictable compensate ASAL households for asset losses. Conventional insurance is not feasible, but researchers are working on an Index Based Livestock Insurance scheme which can be used as a foundation for the PSN program.

Policy Relevance
With the HSNP program on the verge of rollout, this project will allow for an impact evaluation of both the HSNP and the PSN programs. The goal is to design interventions that not only serve the immediate needs of vulnerable households, but also put them on a long-term path to asset protection and improved productivity. The evaluation will be set up to look at households receiving both the HSNP and PSN interventions, those receiving only one, and those households that are not involved in either program. This will help inform the design of future cash transfer programs, and assess the utility of including PSN programs with them. It will look at standard headcount/poverty gap measures, as well as asset accumulation, child education and health, and income and consumption to assess the household benefits of program participation.

Publications

• BASIS Brief no. 2008-08
  Altering Poverty Dynamics with Index Insurance: Northern Kenya's HSNP+, by Christopher B. Barrett, Michael R. Carter, Sommarat Chantarat, John McPeak, and Andrew Mude. November 2008. 2 pages. [Adobe Acrobat 47K].

• BASIS Brief no. 2008-07
  Insuring the Never before Insured: Explaining Index Insurance through Financial Education Games, by Michael R. Carter, Christopher B. Barrett, Stephen Boucher, Sommarat Chantarat, Francisco Galarza, John McPeak, Andrew Mude and Carolina Trivelli. October 2008. 8 pages. [Adobe Acrobat 326K].
  
  Spanish version available: Asegurando a los que nunca estuvieron asegurados: Explicando el seguro por índice a través de juegos de educación financiera
  

• Project Summary: Index-based Livestock Insurance for Northern Kenya's Arid and Semi-arid Lands: The Marsabit Pilot.

• Barrett, Christopher B., Michael R. Carter and Munenobu Ikegami. 2008. "Poverty Traps and Social Protection."

• Project Proposal by Christopher B. Barrett, Michael R. Carter, John McPeak and Andrew Mude. June 2008. [PDF, 15 pages.]

• Poverty Traps and Social Protection by Christopher B. Barrett, Michael R. Carter and Munenobu Ikegami. February 2008. Working paper. [PDF, 36 pages.]