Do Social Interventions Improve Welfare? Evidence From Northern Ghana

Social protection programs (SPP), including agricultural input subsidies (AIS), have been implemented in Ghana over the past three decades aimed at improving the welfare of low-income households. This paper examines whether these social interventions improve welfare in Northern Ghana. We utilized a multipurpose survey data collected from 472 farm households and doubly robust treatment effect estimators to address endogeneity. We found that social interventions increase food and non-food consumption expenditure, reduce food insecurity and poverty likelihood, and finally, increase happiness and resilience. However, the results show considerable heterogeneity in the magnitude of effects across social intervention options and welfare measures. We recommend that the government and development partners should intensify the implementation of social interventions in Northern Ghana to achieve the development outcomes enshrined in the United Nations (UN)'s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and African Union (AU)'s Agenda 2063.