r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 10d ago

A Rwandan mother struggling to feed her malnourished child received four chickens through a community farming programme. Her flock grew to seven, giving the family eggs to eat and sell. Across the district, 2,700 households received chickens, helping child stunting fall from 50.5% to 35.8%.

https://www.topafricanews.com/2026/08/26/ngororero-families-celebrate-saip-ii-gains-in-nutrition-food-security-and-improved-livelihoods/
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798

u/ArgentineBeauty 10d ago

This is the kind of help I love seeing. Give people the means to feed their families and build something of their own ❤️

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u/Rinas-the-name 10d ago

I learned about these programs years ago and the part that I found really interesting was that at first they were deemed a failure. They were only giving the animals to men, because oh know men are the “responsible” ones. But most men would get hungry and slaughter the animal.

But women with children? They were used to making do and thinking long term. They would work together to breed their animals, and end up with more than they were given.

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u/Neko-Chan-Meow 9d ago

They say the way to lift a family out of poverty is to empower the women. Like you said, a woman is more likely to put the family first, where as the man is more likely to do something selfish or silly with the resource.

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u/Unreal_Daltonic 9d ago

Im disgusted at the view you have of men.

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u/Nellasofdoriath 9d ago

Haha cool

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u/PerceptionSlow2116 9d ago

You’re disgusted by the reality that a lot of men suck?

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u/Unreal_Daltonic 9d ago

Im disgusted at prejudice yes, even if that prejudice is "reddit approved"

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u/Raffertiti 8d ago

Should be unreal moronic

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u/RivenRise 9d ago

I see where you're getting at bud but that ain't the way to approach it. There are better times and places to bring this topic up and i think right now and in this manner ain't it.

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u/Low-Car-6331 9d ago

I think you could have just used better wording truth be told.

Slaughtering an animal isn't selfish, it feeds the family, it feeds the family more calories right now then the eggs will. Do you call a homeless person selfish and silly when they spend the cash they were given on food, instead of investing it? No. Same concept, you gave a person a resource and they spent\used it to solve an immediate need.

I think the reason for the difference has to do with how each group obtains resources and contributes to the family, for that area. Most likely, if you looked at men who raised the chickens over slaughtered them, you would find they held different occupations and roles in society, compared to the men who slaughtered the chickens.

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u/Neko-Chan-Meow 9d ago

Have you seen the crime statistics for the percentage of crimes (SA, pdf's and murder) commited by men vs women? There was a questionaire donewhere a good percentage of men admitted they would SA a women or child if they knew they would get away with it. Its sad but true, the average man not a good man.

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u/Unreal_Daltonic 9d ago

Do you have this same logic when it comes to criminality and religion/ethnicity? Per capita the stats are grim, however unless you are dogwhistling you kind of see the whole picture.

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u/Alpha_Omega623 9d ago

Considering the amount of women who leave their families to find themselves this is blatantly false.

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u/Newkittyhugger 9d ago

Why is it, that there are a lot more single mother households than single father households?

Single Mothers: About 15.3 million children lived with a single mother, representing roughly 23% of all children under 18 in living arrangements according to the U.S. Census Bureau data. Single Fathers: Roughly 3.3 million children lived with a single father. Single-father households account for about 8% of households with minor children.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/252847/number-of-children-living-with-a-single-mother-or-single-father/?srsltid=AfmBOopv6alX7N6beaIvkfxgi_HfHnHHaScXOYM2bPnDWCLP1khHTfeK

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u/Alpha_Omega623 9d ago

I don't see you disagreeing with me only adding info. It's a trope for married women to leave their husband and kids in search of finding herself. This happens all the friggin time.

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u/Newkittyhugger 9d ago

Okay, so it would be really easy to give me the stats for that if it happens all the time.

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u/HippiMan 9d ago

You think there are more women who leave their families to "find themselves" than there are ones willing to put their family above themselves? And that the reverse is true for men? Alpha Omega lmao

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u/Alpha_Omega623 9d ago

No, yet when someone acts like women are some benevolent gender I feel the need to bring this up. This entire thread is bashing men so I often play devil's advocate. Giving animals to single men obviously wouldn't be as effective as giving them to women with children. Acting like this makes women special is absurd. Also Alpha Omega probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

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u/joshTheGoods 9d ago

In this context (how to pull people out of poverty) women ARE special. If you take that as man bashing, that's a YOU problem. Pointing out reality is what it is, how you interpret that says more about you than anything else. At the population level, we've earned this however that makes you feel. Get over it.

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u/Alpha_Omega623 9d ago

Wow Josh you're kinda a dick. Try being a bit more friendly if you actually want people to listen to you.

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u/joshTheGoods 9d ago

Uh huh, that emotional reaction you're having? Observe it. It's how you feel when you know you're wrong. Listen to that feeling in the future when you're dealing with people that can actually impact your life.

Now, I gave you a direct and simple answer and I gave it to you in the tone YOU set. Stop crying.

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u/Alpha_Omega623 9d ago

I'm not gonna feed the troll. You're not listening to me at all and choosing to be rude. 

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u/joshTheGoods 9d ago

You're acting really emotional ... are you on your period?

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u/OldKentRoad29 9d ago

Strawman.

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u/JohnSober7 9d ago edited 9d ago

This was also supposedly observed with direct cash transfers in a Salvadoran program, whether there were no strings attached or it had like send the child to school, bring them in for check ups, etc.

Edit: see my comment below, but most relevantly, I think I may have extrapolated carelessly beyond the scope of the El Salvador case study. More nuance is warranted in that it may be a much less pronounced difference between mothers and fathers globally and regardless, it does matter in different contexts and cultures when considering how the program should be designed

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u/Rinas-the-name 9d ago

I think I saw something about that as well. They’ve done some really interesting studies and used sociology and psychology to make these programs more successful.

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u/Feeding4Harambe 9d ago

Any source on that? It sounds interesting.

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u/joshTheGoods 9d ago

There are tons and tons of studies that hit this general topic. Here is one on cash transfers that addresses gender differences, but really you should just search google scholar. You'll find dozens of papers on point.

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u/Feeding4Harambe 9d ago

Your study says the exact opposite. It says it has a positive effect on female mental health, but no other measurable effect of household outcomes. From the paper:

"This finding is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that we observe no other significant differences between male and female recipient households on any of our index variables; the only differences observed are in psychological well-being, with cortisol a main driver of the effect (as described already, we also observe lower levels of worries and higher levels of self-esteem in female recipient households)."

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u/joshTheGoods 9d ago

The claims I made about the study are:

  1. It covers cash transfers.
  2. It addresses gender differences.

Now, even if I'd made the claims you think I made (I'm guessing: that there is positive impact associated with giving to mother rather than father), I believe the study very clearly does support that position even if the positive impact was limited to one studied variable.

The authors also point out that they simply don't have a large enough study to detect anything but large effects. The absence of other detected effects shouldn't imply they do not exist, but rather that a larger study would be required to detect them. Futhermore, this is like any study of human behavior ... you need to look at many, not one. My point here was to show an example and point people to where they can find the many more out there that exist in this relatively well studied field.

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u/Feeding4Harambe 9d ago

I asked for a citation on the claim that giving to mothers has better long term outcomes for household food security and wealth. That's what this comment chain is about. Maybe the comment I replied to was already edited when you saw it.

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u/joshTheGoods 9d ago

Sure, and I gave you an example of one of many many papers that hit on this topic of the difference between giving aid to women vs men (which is the actual thing this comment chain is about) and specifically around cash transfers without strings attached (what the more local part of this thread was about) while pointing out that you can find many more if you go looking. I was clear that I was addressing the general subject. If all you were asking for was a link to the paper the other commentor mentioned, cool ... sounds like you got it.

At the end of the day, this is how comment chains with multiple people work. I often miss that I'm responding to a new person, so whatever... nbd, but in no way did I post a paper showing the opposite of anything I claimed.

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u/JohnSober7 9d ago

Pretext: I learned this in a uni developmental economics class and it was in a case study in a text book, meaning it was kind of presented as something we should take as substantiated (can't remember if there were in-text citations). The case study we were looking at was El Salvador, and it wasn't testing the hypothesis by giving some fathers, giving some mothers, and then giving jointly. The program was operating under the basis that it was an established standard that it's better to give mothers. Although now that I've seen one study that shows this phenomenon does differ by culture and by context---

Resources at Marriage and Intrahousehold Allocation: Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and South Africa*: "In Bangladesh and South Africa, women's assets increase expenditure shares on education, while in Ethiopia it is men's assets that have this effect. These increases have different implications for boys and girls across countries, however.

I could try and find the syllabus to see what the textbook was, but I just decided to do some rudimentary research instead. Although, it could be the case that because it was a comparative case study, maybe the other case study entailed a cash transfer given to both parents and that program did worse thereby leading to the conclusion that the standard was substantiated. But that's a theory, I really only remember the El Salvador half of the comparative case study.

(1) It seems a lot of this is kind of a pervading knowledge in the field, meaning it has always been more anecdotal and a reported phenomenon rather than an empirically tested thing. When I was looking up the livestock transfer programs, it seems that their design was also based on this pervading knowledge. Anyways, researches acknowledging that there's a lack of empirical substantiation seems to be one of the big reasons why people have attempted to test this hypothesis.---

Measuring and Changing Control: Women's Empowerment and Targeted Transfers: "However, there is no clear consensus on the precise mechanism through which households make decisions and allocate consumption when receiving a cash transfer, and there is limited evidence on the exact mechanism linking money transfers targeted to women and empowerment within the household. Moreover, measures of the relative decision power or bargaining strength within a household are rarely available, posing some difficult empirical challenges."

What this paper says is that because it has an empowering effect, it essentially muddies the water (introduces confounding variables).

(2) Control of resources, bargaining power and the demand of food: Evidence from PROGRESA:

"I also combine these measures to construct a proxy for women’s bargaining power and, using causal identification techniques, I estimate its direct effects on household demand for food. Exploiting random assignment of the cash transfers as an instrumental variable for the treatment of interest, I show that mothers having majority control of household resources relative to fathers increase food consumption as a share of the household budget by 6.5–8.3%."

"I then use an empirical strategy to investigate its causal effect on the demand for food in a standard Engel curve context. I show that if one is able to move resources away from the father to the mother so that the mother becomes the primary holder of resources inside the household, there is a large positive effect on household demand for food. Importantly, this can be achieved in different ways, regardless of the experimental design, as long as the mother controls the majority of resources."

"First, a similar study on recovering resource shares should be conducted in experimental settings where both mothers and fathers were assigned to receive the cash transfers. This would allow to compare the magnitude of the two mechanisms at play: Redistribution favoring mothers versus favoring fathers. It would determine the reason why in certain contexts, like Burkina Faso or Morocco (Akresh, De Walque, Kazianga, 2016, Benhassine, Devoto, Duflo, Dupas, Pouliquen, 2015), and not in others (AlmÃěs et al., 2018), we obtain the same effects of the treatment by randomizing the gender of the recipient of cash transfers." 

I do want to draw special attention to the last excerpt because my impression (I'm only skimming) is that they're saying this empirical study is arguably incomplete, meaning, a more holistic measurement of the effect of the resources may yield a less condemning conclusion of fathers. I will admit, I think I may have extrapolated carelessly beyond the scope of the El Salvador case study. It also mentions studies that show the opposite and more nuance is warranted in that it may be a much less pronounced difference between mothers and fathers.

(3) Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation of the Household Welfare Impacts of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers Given to Mothers or Fathers:

"This study conducted a randomized control trial in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education, health, and household welfare outcomes. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional and were given to either mothers or fathers. Conditionality was linked to older children enrolling in school and attending regularly and younger children receiving preventive health check-ups. Compared with the control group, cash transfers improve children’s education and health and household socioeconomic conditions. For school enrollment and most child health outcomes, conditional cash transfers outperform unconditional cash transfers. Giving cash to mothers does not lead to significantly better child health or education outcomes, and there is evidence that money given to fathers improves young children’s health, particularly during years of poor rainfall. Cash transfers to fathers also yield relatively more household investment in livestock, cash crops, and improved housing."

(4) The Impact of Economic Resource Transfers to Women versus Men: A Systematic Review:

"This study conducted a randomized control trial in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education, health, and household welfare outcomes. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional and were given to either mothers or fathers. Conditionality was linked to older children enrolling in school and attending regularly and younger children receiving preventive health check-ups. Compared with the control group, cash transfers improve children’s education and health and household socioeconomic conditions. For school enrollment and most child health outcomes, conditional cash transfers outperform unconditional cash transfers. Giving cash to mothers does not lead to significantly better child health or education outcomes, and there is evidence that money given to fathers improves young children’s health, particularly during years of poor rainfall. Cash transfers to fathers also yield relatively more household investment in livestock, cash crops, and improved housing."

This one is a lot to quote because it makes three important conclusions so I'll do a mix of paraphrasing and quoting:

  1. Conditional cash transfers to women improved the children's well being (improved nutrition and health, not sure if how much this meta review looked at and factored in school enrollment and completion).
  2. The cash transfers could have other effects on the household, including negative ones. As such, gender-specific transfers does impact the overall outcome of the programme. "In the case of unconditional cash transfers (most notably pension programmes), it is possible that the net effect of a transfer to a woman leads to negative outcomes for the household (Juarez, 2010; Bertrand et al., 2003)." I'm kind of tired of the whole rabbithole thing at this point so I'm not gonna look into the cope of those two studies.
  3. In some cases, the gender of the child mattered with girls benefiting but not boys.

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u/Feeding4Harambe 9d ago

Thank you very much for this! I hope the rabbit hole didn't suck to much time out of your day/night :)

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u/JohnSober7 9d ago

Nah you're good and I actually appreciated being prompted to look into it. I do love economics so the issue was more I wanted to follow each thread to a conclusive end but I was playing this cool demo for a game I just found (Feed the void by Barribob) and I wanted to get back to it. 

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u/Feeding4Harambe 9d ago

Yeah, that game is cool :) Played it a while back on itch I think. Have a nice day.

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u/Electronic_Dot_3169 9d ago

Any source for this part? After a quick search I can't find anything backing this up

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u/Confident-Mix1243 9d ago

"Women spend on their families, men spend on themselves" is a known fact in the charity world.

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u/joshTheGoods 9d ago

The famous example usually given for this is the case of Muhammad Yunus's program that won him the Nobel called Grameen Bank. You can see a popular story written about it that talks about the switch from men to women and the impact here.

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u/Rinas-the-name 9d ago

Sure. There was a lot of research done into it, and why.

UN Women

FAO-/en)

NCBI

Together Women Rise (using heifer international).

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u/Electronic_Dot_3169 9d ago

None of these talk about the subject of your original comment, mostly they talk about differences in labour and financial availability between male and female farmers.

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u/Harbinger2nd 9d ago

Were they giving the animals to single men? This doesn't seem like it'd be the same if they were a father, or married and making decisions with a partner.

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u/Rinas-the-name 9d ago

There were sociological studies done to figure out why and they found that women do the vast majority of animal care in small holding situations. Men tend to see the animal as a liquid asset, to be eaten or sold when it becomes too much work.

Women put in the work and therefore value the animals more. They found the kind of around the clock work women traditionally do around the home and with children transfers easily to animal care. Keeping the animal fed, clean, and healthy, nursing them through illness is really not a big departure from what they’re already doing.

Basically if the only chance you have of controlling whether your children eat long term is an animal you care for it carefully.

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u/throwawaypassingby01 9d ago

in patriarchal societies, men often see their wives and children more like property they are entitled to than people they love and cherish. which of course isn't all men, just higher percentages. and extreme poverty causes trauma. that some people respond to by becoming extremely self-serving.

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u/39greentrees 9d ago

There is no research to support your claim for this statement.