Valuing Time Savings as a Measure of Household Income. A second key finding of “no observable impacts on household income” highlights the underlying importance of (i) better understanding of the recommended minimum amount of time that need lapse between before and after comparisons on household consumption and expenditure patterns in agricultural-based rural economies and (ii) brings into question how evaluators should assign value to time savings for the alternative use of household time on economically productive and/or non-remunerated work. Regarding the latter, the MCC Department of Policy and Evaluation is studying the possible assignment of an economic value on time savings independent of time use; equivalent to the local hourly labor market rate for unskilled labor.
Lesson Learned