Evaluating the effects of housing interventions on multidimensional poverty : the case of TECHO-Argentina

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the NGO TECHO’s emergency housing programme on multidimensional poverty. It employs a quasi-experimental ‘pipeline’ evaluation design and is based on household survey data from 34 informal settlements in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The aim is to demonstrate the additional insights that can be gained from using a multidimensional framework based on the Alkire and Foster (2011) method to evaluate a programme’s impact. The results indicate that the programme reduces both the incidence and the intensity of poverty and causes the multidimensional poverty measure to fall by more than half. The magnitude of the effect is greater for the households that initially were the poorest. Privacy, interpersonal relations and psychological health are the dimensions that contribute the most to explaining the decline in multidimensional deprivation.