CashEval TTV tool background paper

Rural Mongolia has traditionally been marked by pastoralist livelihoods, where livestock herding is the principal means of sustenance. However, this pastoralist way of life has become increasingly threatened in recent decades. Successions of dry summers and devastating winters, known as dzud, have led to heightened livestock mortality, threatening the economic stability of rural families. Dzuds are likely to occur more frequently with greater intensity due to climate change, leading to increasing challenges. When extreme weather conditions meet vulnerable households, they can cause  humanitarian disasters.

Between 2021 and 2023, PIK and PIN implemented a new research project to understand how pastoralist households can be best supported to cope with dzud winters. The CashEval project was generously funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and implemented with the support of the NSO Mongolia. Specifically, the CashEval project aims to generate new knowledge about the potential of anticipatory cash transfers as a humanitarian aid tool to mitigate the risk that pastoralist households encounter due to extreme weather conditions.

Anchoring this project's mission, PIK conducted a rigorous impact evaluation of a cash transfer distribution implemented by PIN in March 2021. Furthermore, the CashEval project seeks to generate positive external effects by leveraging the insights from the evaluation study to issue clear, concise, and applicable guidance for organizations providing cash aid in extreme weather events. For this purpose, the People in Need Mongolia, under the CashEval project, created a tool explicitly designed to identify recipients of humanitarian cash assistance and determine the appropriate aid amounts. This targeting and transfer value (TTV) seeks to determine for which group of households anticipatory cash assistance is most effective in reducing property damage caused by dzud events. Furthermore, it addresses additional goals of cash transfers, such as their effectiveness in enabling households to maintain an appropriate level of food consumption and safeguard the health of household members.