Anti-Poverty Programs — Basic Structure

Basic Structure

Match the instrument to the constraint

Immediate consumption: — food or income support can reduce a current shortfall. Adequacy and timely receipt matter alongside coverage.
Employment insecurity: — a work guarantee links an entitlement to eligible demand for work. Record demand, work provided and payment separately.
Low earning capacity: — skills, productive assets, credit and market access can support livelihoods. Credit disbursed remains a liability, not income earned.
Service deprivation: — health, education, water and housing affect capabilities and the risk of distress expenditure. A service must be usable, not merely sanctioned.

Keep three evaluation levels separate

An input is a resource such as a budget. An output is a delivered activity, such as a completed work or training session. An outcome is a change in income, access or vulnerability. A causal claim needs evidence about what would plausibly have happened without the intervention.

Preserve the date and unit

The 2026 rural-employment transition brought the VB–G RAM G framework into force from 1 July, with a 125-day household guarantee under its conditions. Do not present the older 100-day MGNREGA formulation as the current framework without a historical qualifier. Household entitlement is different from an individual entitlement.

Diagnose exclusion and leakage independently

An eligible household omitted from a list is an exclusion error. An ineligible recipient included is an inclusion error. Reducing one does not automatically reduce the other. Accessible registration, verification, payment tracking and grievance correction should be designed together. Use multidimensional poverty indicators to understand overlapping deprivation, while retaining their survey period and methodology.