Linking to household income is difficult. In Nicaragua, the evaluators find that farm incomes increased; however, they do not find an impact on household consumption (a proxy for household income). This highlights two main issues around the difficulty of making the link to household income: (i) household income from a variety of sources is difficult to measure and (ii) the assumption that an increase in farm income leads to an increase in overall household income does not always hold. This may be because in the short to medium term, as households adjust to increases in farm income, the overall household income stays the same or can decline as a result of substitution from other sources. These points will be taken into consideration for future evaluations.
Lesson Learned