SAGA Progress Report and Workplan

SAGA
B16 MVR Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
(607) 255-8931
Fax (607) 255-0178
saga@cornell.edu

SAGA PROGRESS REPORT (12/03-12/04) &
UPCOMING WORKPLAN (1/05-12/05)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

SAGA is now beginning its fourth year, chronologically, but only the third year of project activities given delays in start-up and funding shortfalls. While only at the half way point of the cooperative agreement, we already have significant achievements toward SAGA’s objectives of high quality poverty research, institution strengthening, and policy outreach. This report familiarizes and informs USAID and others about our progress and plans.

In research, over 120 papers have been prepared under SAGA, many of which uncover surprising findings that will alter the way policy makers need to think about key issues. For example:

We find that while school attainment is influenced by the education of parents, this does not apply to cognitive skills. Instead, once we control for school attainment, parental education and other household characteristics have little impact on test scores. This implies that public investments in quality schools and other initiatives that keep children in school will have high returns, regardless of the child’s home environment.
Asset and income dynamics of rural households in sub-Saharan Africa exhibit patterns consistent with the poverty traps hypothesis. Systems characterized by poverty traps need targeted interventions to build up the assets of the poor — perhaps especially through education, health and nutrition to sustain and improve the quality of household labor endowments — and safety nets to protect the limited productive assets the poor own. Much remains to be learned in this nascent area, but the SAGA team and its collaborators in Africa are at the forefront of this exciting area of research.

SAGA is building capacity in partner institutions to conduct high quality research, to raise funding for research, and to raise their national and international profiles. Prominent examples are:

SAGA has run intensive workshops on poverty and inequality analysis for researchers at partner institutions in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia; for faculty at the historically disadvantaged universities in South Africa, and for South Africa's Treasury and Department of Social Development.
Many SAGA research papers are co-authored by researchers at Cornell and researchers at SISERA institutions. Others are written by SISERA researchers with technical support from SAGA.
With seed money and technical assistance from SAGA, the Institute for Statistical, Social, and Economic Research at the University of Ghana received support from the ACBF to found the Network on the Economy of Ghana.
SAGA supported the Development Policy Research Unit's effort to expand the scope of its annual conference on the economy of South Africa to research and researchers from all of Africa.
SAGA’s grants program has supported extended visits of 21 U.S.-based researchers at SISERA institutions around the continent.

SAGA researchers and our partner institutions are reaching out to the policy making community in a variety of ways. In the month of November 2004, there were 21,182 hits on the SAGA website and 4,673 downloads of PDF files. In the period January-November, 2004, the SAGA website registered 83, 298 hits, and there were 24,354 downloads of SAGA publications. We have held 15 policy-oriented conferences and workshops, and we regularly engage policymakers and stakeholders directly in our effort to promote evidence-based policy making. This is illustrated by:

The active participation of Chris Barrett and his Kenyan research partners in high level policy deliberations around the PRSP, the Kenya Rural Development Strategy, and in the founding of a Kenya Policy Research and Outreach Forum;
Ravi Kanbur’s continued engagement of high level policy makers in South Africa, including through presentations to parliamentarians and engaging Ministerial level officials in conferences and workshops to help shape policy dialogue in South Africa;
The interest that the Minster of Education and the Secretary General in Madagascar have taken in SAGA’s efforts to promote evidence-based policy making. The outcome of regular meetings between David Sahn and the Minister and his staff includes identifying a set of information and institution strengthening initiatives that has resulted in the Ministry contracting directly with Cornell University to provide policy guidance and training to its staff.

The coming year will see continued progress on a variety of projects addressing SAGA’s basic themes of: (i) schooling, education and human capital, (ii) health and nutrition, (iii) risk, vulnerability and poverty dynamics, and (iv) empowerment and institutions. In addition to bringing or work in progress to fruition, we will continue to be responsive to opportunities and challenges as they arise, an approach made possible by the flexibility inherent in SAGA’s demand driven work plan.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.

II.

11.1
11.1.2
11.2
11.2.1
11.2.2
11.2.3
11.3
11.3.1
11.3.2
11.3.3
11.3.4
11.4

III.

111.1
111.2

IV.

IV.1
IV.2
IV.3

V.

VI.

VII.

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

RESEARCH

Schooling, Education, and Human Capital
Schooling Attainment and Cognitive Ability
Health
Institutional Analysis and Health Delivery Systems
HIV/AIDS
Non-Income Measures of Well-Being and Poverty
Empowerment and Institutions
Q-Squared
Labor Market Institutions
Access to Social Services
Land Tenure
Risk, Vulnerability and Poverty Dynamics

INSTITUTION BUILDING AND TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

The Small Grants Program
Technical Assistance

POVERTY OUTREACH

SAGA Website
Conferences and Workshops
Direct Engagement of Policy Makers

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

LEVERAGE

USAID MISSIONS

ANNEX

Return to SAGA Progress Reports