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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Elodie Becquey

Elodie Becquey is a Senior Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit, based in IFPRI’s West and Central Africa office in Senegal. She has over 15 years of research experience in diet, nutrition, and food security in Africa, including countries such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania.

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Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Deboleena Rakshit

Research Analyst

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ORCiD
Deboleena Rakshit

Bio

Deboleena Rakshit is a Research Analyst in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. She works on rigorous evaluation of the gendered impacts of social protection programs on resilience, health, and general well-being, with a regional focus on South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to joining IFPRI, she worked with Equimundo (formerly Promundo-US) in Washington, DC, as a Quantitative Researcher, and with Quest Alliance in Bangalore as a Program Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist. She holds a master’s degree in International Development, with a focus on Development Economics, from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Jadavpur University.

Languages spoken: English, Bengali, Hindi, French

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Publications

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Working Paper

Are poor people conditionally cooperative? Contrasting evidence from a field-adapted contributions game

2025Allen IV, James; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Rakshit, Deboleena
Details

Are poor people conditionally cooperative? Contrasting evidence from a field-adapted contributions game

We study conditional cooperation using a field-adapted conditional contributions game in rural Mozambique, eliciting community members’ willingness to contribute to a new public program conditional on how many others contribute. While past studies suggest most people are conditional cooperators (contributing more as others do), most of our sample (57%) are undefined by standard classifications. Instead, our sample’s most common types are largely absent from the literature: counter conditional cooperators (contributing less as others do) and v-shaped cooperators, both for monetary donations (30% and 19%) and volunteering (35% and 12%). Our findings motivate future research in both non-laboratory and low-income settings.

Year published

2025

Authors

Allen IV, James; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Rakshit, Deboleena

Citation

Allen IV, James; Karachiwalla, Naureen; and Rakshit, Deboleena. 2025. Are poor people conditionally cooperative? Contrasting evidence from a field-adapted contributions game. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2364. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/176850

Country/Region

Mozambique

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Southern Africa; Cooperation; Low Income Groups; Poverty; School Feeding

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Displacement and development: Evidence from a graduation program for Somalia’s ultra-poor

2025Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Rakshit, Deboleena
Details

Displacement and development: Evidence from a graduation program for Somalia’s ultra-poor

While the population of internally displaced people around the world continues to grow, evidence around strategies to sustainably enhance livelihoods among IDPs remains extremely limited. We present findings from a randomized trial of an ultra-poor graduation program targeting IDPs in urban Baidoa, Somalia; the intervention pro-vided cash transfers, an asset transfer or technical training program, and facilitated savings groups. Our findings suggest that two years following program launch, the intervention has led to significant increases in consumption, assets, and savings; however, these effects seem to be driven almost exclusively by increased livestock production. An exploration of heterogeneous effect using generalized random forest methods further suggests that the positive effects of the treatment are dramatically larger for smaller households characterized by lower dependency ratios.

Year published

2025

Authors

Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Rakshit, Deboleena

Citation

Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; and Rakshit, Deboleena. 2025. Displacement and development: Evidence from a graduation program for Somalia’s ultra-poor. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2356. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/176389

Country/Region

Somalia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Development; Internally Displaced Persons; Livelihoods; Livestock

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

Evolution of intimate partner violence impacts from cash transfers, food transfers, and behaviour change communication: Mixed-method experimental evidence from a nine-year post-programme follow-up in Bangladesh

2025Lokot, Michelle; Sultana, Nasrin; Hidrobo, Melissa; Ahmed, Akhter; Hoddinott, John F.; Rakshit, Deboleena; Roy, Shalini; Ranganathan, Meghna
Details

Evolution of intimate partner violence impacts from cash transfers, food transfers, and behaviour change communication: Mixed-method experimental evidence from a nine-year post-programme follow-up in Bangladesh

Cash or food transfers can reduce intimate partner violence (IPV), but knowledge gaps remain on how impacts evolve over time, and the role of complementary ‘plus’ activities and contextual factors. We conducted a mixed-method analysis of how the Transfer Modality Research Initiative in Bangladesh affected IPV over time. The programme was implemented from 2012 to 2014, following a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design, across Northern and Southern Bangladesh. Intervention arms included monthly cash or food transfers, with or without complementary nutrition behaviour change communication (BCC). We estimate post-programme impacts on IPV using quantitative data collected in 2014–2015, 2018, and 2022, and combine this with qualitative data collected in 2023 to explore how and why IPV impacts evolved over time and the role of contextual factors. In the North, combining cash with BCC led to sustained IPV reductions in each post-programme round, while cash alone reduced IPV in 2022 but not the previous two rounds; food transfers showed no post-programme impacts. In the South, combining food with BCC led to post-programme IPV reductions in 2014–2015; no intervention sustained IPV reductions thereafter. Sustained IPV reductions are primarily driven by improved household economic security and emotional well-being. Other pathways – family relationships (including in-laws’ roles), women’s empowerment, and social and community support – contributed to changing couples’ relationships during the programme but became less salient after the programme ended. Contextual factors, including demographic changes, climate-related changes, external projects and norms condoning IPV appear to influence the sustainability of impacts. Results suggest that ‘plus’ programming was key to sustaining IPV impacts soon after the interventions, but less so by nine years post-programme, as economic security increasingly drove impacts. More mixed method research is needed from the outset to unpack if and how pathways to IPV reduction can be sustained in different contexts over time.

Year published

2025

Authors

Lokot, Michelle; Sultana, Nasrin; Hidrobo, Melissa; Ahmed, Akhter; Hoddinott, John F.; Rakshit, Deboleena; Roy, Shalini; Ranganathan, Meghna

Citation

Lokot, Michelle; Sultana, Nasrin; Hidrobo, Melissa; Ahmed, Akhter; Hoddinott, John; Rakshit, Deboleena; Roy, Shalini; and Ranganathan, Meghna. 2025. Evolution of intimate partner violence impacts from cash transfers, food transfers, and behaviour change communication: Mixed-method experimental evidence from a nine-year post-programme follow-up in Bangladesh. Social Science and Medicine 371(April 2025): 117901. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117901

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Behaviour; Cash Transfers; Communication; Domestic Violence; Social Protection

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117901 Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Journal Article

Events

Building pathways out of poverty: Midline findings from a randomized controlled trial
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

July 31, 2024, 9:00 – 10:00 am

Building pathways out of poverty: Midline findings from a randomized controlled trial

This webinar will provide evidence around the effects of the Ultra Poor Graduation program implemented in Baidoa, Somalia by World Vision and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA). The project seeks to enable ultra-poor internally displaced households to graduate from extreme poverty and begin an upward trajectory […]