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

SAGA PROGRESS REPORT (12/04-12/05) &
UPCOMING WORKPLAN (11/05-11/06)


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

SAGA is now beginning its fifth year, chronologically. Due to funding shortfalls, however, we are still at a level of spending that is consistent with an amount envisaged for 2.5 years of the project. Thus, in terms of the overall level of effort, we are only slightly more than halfway into the activities envisaged in the overall Cooperative Agreement. Despite our disappointment with the severe cut-back in funding, we continue to engage in a wide range of activities and have made significant strides 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, 208 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. (Additionally, we have posted the proceedings,      Quantitative and Qualitative Methods for Poverty Analysis, from the workshop held March 11, 2004, in Nairobi, Kenya.) For example:
  • Conditional on a child’s level of schooling, having better educated parents or enjoying the advantages of being in a wealthier household have only modest or inconsistent (across tests) benefits for academic performance. Therefore, efforts to enroll and keep in school children from less advantaged backgrounds will contribute significantly to closing not just schooling gaps themselves but also the substantial skill gaps that exist between them and more affluent children.

  • Education among women is generally associated with lowering at-risk behaviors. Among men, however, we often find just the opposite case for age at first sex, abstinence, and number of partners — that education increases behaviors that are associated with high risk of HIV/AIDS infection. However, this is not the case with condoms, where education, even among men, is associated with higher use of condoms.

  • Income and asset dynamics in western and northern Kenya exhibit patterns consistent with the notion of a poverty trap. Nonlinear asset and welfare dynamics create critical thresholds, points at which safety nets become especially important to guard against shocks that could make people permanently poor and to induce rural people to manage risk without severely compromising expected income growth. Health and mortality shocks appear the most common explanations for households falling into chronic poverty, a result consistent with what we find in Uganda.

  • Unemployment in South Africa at the end of the period stands at a staggering 41.8% and is concentrated among African, female, poorly educated, and young workers, although increasingly, even those with high levels of education are suffering. Almost nine in ten unemployed individuals have been unemployed for more than three years or have never had a job at all.
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:
  • The “Shared Growth in Africa” conference, held in Accra on July 21-22, 2005, was hosted by ISSER, as part of our institution building strategy, to raise ISSER’s profile from national to regional prominence.

  • Funding was obtained from ACBF for the Economy of Ghana Network. Also, building their capacity to organize, manage and raise funding for Pan-African conferences (Accra, July 2005; Cape Town, October 2004).
SAGA researchers and our partner institutions are reaching out to promote the maximum level of policy impact in a variety of ways:
  • In the month of September, there were 21,164 hits on the SAGA website and 5,880 downloads of PDF files. In the period January-September, 2005, the SAGA website registered 225,516 hits, and there were 50,132 downloads of SAGA publications. This is more than double the number of hits registered for all of 2004 (101,088).

  • We have held 20 policy-oriented conferences and workshops, and we regularly engage policy-makers and stakeholders directly in our effort to promote evidence-based policy making. This is illustrated by:

    • SAGA co-hosted a major regional education conference that included participation of the Minister of Education, the Rector of the University of Dakar, and other high level officials from Government and academia to discuss challenges in the education sector.

    • Conferences held in Ghana and South Africa involved policy makers: Imraan Rasool, Premier of Western Cape, and Alan Hirsch of the President’s Office at the “Micro- Macro Linkages” conference, Cape Town, October 2004; Deputy Finance Minister, Chief Economist for Africa of the World Bank, and Head of USAID-Ghana at the “Shared Growth in Africa” conference, Accra, July 2005.

The SAGA teams are also working hard to promote and foster engagement with our partners at USAID through a variety of mechanisms. For example:
  • Cornell researchers and their colleagues presented nine policy seminars are USAID in Washington during the last year.

  • SAGA researchers recently held a workshop at the USAID mission in Kampala highlighting the key results of SAGA research in Uganda. This was followed by a meeting at USAID to discuss how EPRC and Cornell might support analysis of the Sero survey, a DHS-like survey carried out by Macro International that collected blood samples to identify HIV status.
As we look to the future and the severe budgetary cuts to SAGA, we have only modest expectations in terms of accomplishments and activities for the next year. Our hope is that some funds will be identified to allow us to not lose momentum and avoid the draconian cuts in activities that seem inevitable at this juncture.

 TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.

II.
11.1
11.1.1
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
IV.
IV.1
IV.2
IV.3
V.

VI.

VII.


INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

RESEARCH
Schooling, Education, and Human Capital
     Schooling Attainment and Cognitive Ability
     Community Schools

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
POVERTY OUTREACH
SAGA Website
Conferences and Workshops
Direct Engagement of Policy Makers
MONITORING AND EVALUATION

LEVERAGE

USAID MISSIONS

APPENDIX I: Special issue for World Development (forthcoming 2006)—Q-Squared in Practice: Experiences of Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches in Poverty Analysis

APPENDIX II: Table 1: SAGA Competitive Research Grants – Final Awardees (2005-2006)

APPENDIX III: Table 2: SAGA Competitive Research Grants – Short List (2005-2006)

APPENDIX IV: Table 3: Proposals submitted under the Competitive Research Grants Program (2005-2006)

APPENDIX V: Table 4: Follow ups/Outputs of the Competitive Research Grants Program (2005-2006)

APPENDIX VI: SAGA Website Statistics

APPENDIX VII: SHARED GROWTH IN AFRICA - Survey of Workshop Participants

APPENDIX VIII: EMPOWERING THE RURAL POOR AND REDUCING THEIR RISK AND VULNERABILITY - Survey of Workshop Participants

APPENDIX IX: POVERTY IN UGANDA: TRENDS, DIMENSIONS, AND POLICY - Survey of Workshop Participants

APPENDIX X: SAGA PUBLICATIONS 12/01/04-11/08/05

APPENDIX XI: SAGA RESEARCH IN PRINT

APPENDIX XII: SAGA CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS, PRESENTATIONS



Return to SAGA Progress Reports


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