‘Big push’ interventions and economic benefits for farming households: Empirical evidence from the Millennium Village Project in Bonsaaso, Ghana

Abstract

In recent times "big push" interventions have been implemented at the household level in a bid to deal with poverty in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. Although some studies have evaluated the impact of these big push interventions on health and education outcomes, there has not been as much focus on their impact on production activities, particularly asset accumulation and farm output of farming households. This study assesses the impact of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), a big push project, on farming households in Ghana. Using primary data from 202 farming households which participated in the MVP and 97 farming households from non-MVP village farmers, We employ Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Augmented Inverse Probability Weighting (AIPW) to evaluate the differences among participants and non-participants in terms of economic and financial outcomes because of the MVP interventions for agricultural productivity. Our findings indicate that participating in the MVP resulted in Ghs 195 per adult equivalent increase in assets added from the MVP over ten years. However, MVP participation also resulted in a GHS 83 per adult equivalent increase in farm expenditure, which is less than the GHS 587 per adult equivalent increase in farm output. Our findings suggest that big push projects like the MVP can lead to substantial increases in asset accumulation and farm output and incomes and provide insights for policymakers into the effectiveness of long-term "big push" interventions for achieving sustainable development goals, SDG1 and SDG2, in low income and lower-middle-income countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.