An In-Depth Look at the Financial Lives of Mavuno Farmers

In 2017, Mavuno, a nonprofit organization that works to end extreme poverty in eastern Congo, tracked a subset of 237 participant, or "partner" households, including incoming partners considered not yet treated, and conducted in-depth interviews with each household over a period of six months. The survey sought to understand how partners manage their income on a day-to-day basis. As such, the survey was designed to capture the inflows, outflows, assets, strategies, and debts of partners.

The results of the survey can be seen as a valuable tool in understanding the spending and budgeting priorities of partners. Furthermore, one can compare two important and different treatment effects using the data:

1. Program participation, for which we can consider older program members “treated” and incoming, not-yet treated partners a "control" group;
2. Microfinance program impact, for which we can compare Mavuno’s microfinance program users with non-microfinance users.