How do savings groups influence resilience? Evidence from Nigeria

Women’s savings group programs are increasingly seen as an important strategy for advancing women’s economic empowerment and may have the potential to increase the resiliency of members and their communities to covariate shocks, such as climate change. While various studies have examined how savings groups have mitigated the effects of shocks, empirical evidence on resilience remains thin, however. This study examines how women’s savings groups in Nigeria could influence resilience by leveraging a quasi-experimental study of a government-implemented savings group program in Nigeria. The study combines longitudinal data of over 6,000 surveys with women and their husbands with surveys of over 1,200 women’s savings groups in six states in Nigeria. We combine these longitudinal data with a survey examining perceptions of climate change among the same households and panel data of an adaptation of a resilience index developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis). We first examine whether the resilience index predicts coping behavior followed by a difference-in-difference analysis to assess the impact of women’s savings groups on resilience. Next, we assess the pathways of change by linking the impacts on resilience to impacts on women’s decision-making power, asset ownership, and income and household-level consumption, and agricultural productivity. We also assess how climate change perceptions and exposure to droughts and floods moderated the impact of women’s savings groups on resilience. We will have results at the time of the conference.
The presentation will include the findings as well as a presentation by the World Bank about their evidence needs related to climate change and resilience. The World Bank will discuss how they plan to use the findings in the contexts of savings group programming in close consultation with the government of Nigeria.