External Research

Sumarto et al. (2025)

“We find that community targeting is progressive in all three experiments, and that communities appear to place greater weight in their decisions on those who may be more vulnerable…communities are targeting people that are ranked by their peers as less well off, resulting in higher overall satisfaction with the targeting process.”

A randomized controlled trial on sustaining schools in Afghanistan, Burde et al. (2023)

“This shows that a model of service administration that is rooted in mechanisms of bottom-up accountability can perform in a setting in which top-down, centralized approaches have previously failed.”

Wong & Guggenheim (2018)

“The empirical evidence from evaluations confirms that community-driven development programs provide…villagers, especially the disadvantaged, with a voice in how development funds are used to improve their welfare.”

Barron et al. (2024)

“CDD has shown a relatively unique ability to resist corruption and deliver basic services…likely because of its incorporation of local accountability and transparency mechanisms, and the relatively wide discretion it grants trusted frontline implementers to customize responses to community idiosyncrasies...”

Linneman & Winkler (2022)

“...CDD approaches also have a strong track record of benefitting the poorest areas of a country and fostering inclusion by increasing participation and voice of marginalized groups in the development process. For most projects, these effects meet or exceed the project’s stated objectives.”

Assessing the effects of community-driven development in Afghanistan, Beath et al. (2015)

“The participatory approach adopted by NSP has borne fruit in developing a role for women in local public decision-making and, in so doing, countering the traditional dominance of male elites over local governance.

Palaniswamy (2019)

“We find that [CDD] significantly increases women’s participation in [self help groups] along numerous dimensions—meeting attendance, propensity to speak, and the length of floor time they enjoy. Our estimates show that the [CDD] program nearly doubles the number of women who come to the [self help groups], and boosts their frequency of speech by nearly 45 percent.”

Wong & Guggenheim (2018)

“Generally, participation in (CDD) community meetings can range from 40 to 70 percent of households in a village, with women representing anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of attendees.”

“The quality of women’s participation varies widely, but in nearly all cases reviewed, the trend is broadly positive with women’s participation in CDD operations being exponentially higher than it is in traditional councils or in sectoral community-wide programs.”

Barron et al. (2024)

“By and large, it [CDD] has proven to be an effective mechanism for delivering infrastructure and other public goods cost-effectively. CDD project mechanisms, including community councils and networks of facilitators, have demonstrated that they can deliver a wide range of types of development assistance.”

Samii (2023)

“...CDR interventions have demonstrated an impressive level of efficiency. CDR interventions have generated institutional networks that are durable and adaptable for achieving goals of both infrastructure reconstruction and sustainable service delivery. CDR does so in a manner that is consistent with imperatives for contributing to local institution building and handing over reconstruction programmes to locally accountable institutions.”

A randomized controlled trial on sustaining schools in Afghanistan, Burde et al. (2023)

“Unlike administrative networks tied into the former central government, the community councils have largely remained intact and, amazingly, have continued to serve as networks for the administration of internationally-sponsored humanitarian aid even under Taliban rule. This echoes past indications of the resilience of community institutions despite shifts in centralized authority.”

“We show that CDD institutions offer a durable institutional architecture for administering services in challenging settings.”

Wong & Guggenheim (2018)

“Several independent technical audits and studies have also shown that infrastructure and public works are built at comparatively lower costs than other forms of service delivery, without sacrificing technical quality.

Studies from the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Burkina Faso, and Malawi, for example, have demonstrated 15 percent to 40 percent lower costs, depending on the type of investments”

Final Impact Evaluation, Olken et al. (2011)

“[CDD] has illustrated the flexibility and adaptability of this community model once the architecture and machinery are established.”

Barron et al. (2024)

“One of the most consistent findings on CDD is that block grants to communities can improve access to, and the quality of, basic infrastructure and services.”

“In rare cases, CDD projects can also improve health and education outcomes. For example, the [CDD] program in Indonesia created significant positive impacts across a range of health and education outcomes, including a 10 percent decrease in childhood malnutrition.”

Linneman & Winkler (2022)

“Findings from several rigorous evaluations provide robust evidence that CDD projects have improved economic welfare.”

Assessing the effects of communitydriven development in Afghanistan, Beath et al. (2015)

“Using a randomized controlled trial across 500 villages, the evaluation finds that [CDD] had a positive effect on access to drinking water and electricity, acceptance of democratic processes, perceptions of economic well being, and attitudes toward women.”

Assessing the impacts of community-driven development in Sierra Leone, Casey (2013)

“We conclude with confidence that communities are better off in very tangible ways due to their participation in [CDD].”

Cambodia’s Commune and Sangkat Fund (Boret et al., 2021)

“The (CDD) program, which amounted to a mere 3% of the national budget, created substantial capital stock over the years in communes and villages and delivered large returns measured in poverty reduction.”

A revised synthesis report, World Bank (2013)

“The (CDD) project had a positive impact on household consumption. Specifically, per capita consumption increased by about 12 percent as a result of the project…these impacts are stronger for households that were classified as poor…which experienced a 19 percent increase in per capita consumption.”

Forecasts and evidence from Sierra Leone, Casey et al. (2021)

“…following up with communities more than a decade after baseline data collection, we document strong persistence of CDD impacts on local public infrastructure, commensurate with two-thirds of the short-run gains (measured seven years prior).

We find modest positive long-run effects on local institutions…we find suggestive evidence that these positive long-run effects on infrastructure and, to a lesser extent, institutions helped communities respond somewhat more effectively to the 2014 Ebola epidemic.”

The long-term impacts of a local infrastructure and governance program in Cambodia, BenYishay et al. (2019)

“Our analysis reveals that (CDD) projects reduced infant mortality, which indicates the economic development gains resulting from local infrastructure improvements were broadly shared by village residents (between 2008 and 2016).”

“We find that the completion of locally-managed infrastructure projects supported by [CDD]—in particular, road improvements in densely populated rural areas—significantly improved local economic development outcomes (between 2008 and 2016).”

Kondylis & Loeser (2021)

“Our estimates imply that [cash plus] complementary interventions increase impacts on consumption…we also find evidence of greater heterogeneity in the impacts of [cash plus] relative to [unconditional cash transfer] interventions, suggesting [cash plus] may be more cost effective than [unconditional cash transfers] in a range of contexts. 

“...the relative cost effectiveness of [cash plus] increases over time, and our estimates imply [cash plus] increases cumulative consumption per unit of program cost by more than [unconditional cash transfers] after 3.4-7.7 years.”

Evidence from six countries, Banerjee et al. (2015)

“The experiment, conducted in six countries on three continents, shows that the ultra poor Graduation program improves the lives of the very poor along many dimensions. The program’s primary goal, to increase consumption, is achieved by the conclusion of the program and maintained 1 year later…the general pattern of positive effects that persist for at least a year after.”

Evidence from a systematic review andmeta-analysis, Leight et al. (2024)

“Cash transfer programming is associated with an increase of between $1 and $2 in monthly household consumption and income per $100 in cumulative transfers… this effect is meaningfully larger (as much as $4 larger) for cash transfer programs that also include a cash plus livelihoods intervention.”