Using full matching to measure the marginal benefit of bicycles in a multifaceted development programme

We evaluate the impact that bicycle provision has on education and empowerment outcomes for girls in remote communities. Bicycles were provided as a sub-component of a large multidimensional girls’ education programme implemented across rural Zimbabwe. The bicycles and the larger programme were designed to address barriers experienced by the most marginalised children in these communities, including girls who have to travel long distances to get to school. Evaluating the specific components of multifaceted development programmes is often challenging when randomisation is not feasible or when sub-components are prioritised for specific populations. We demonstrate how optimal full matching can be used to isolate the marginal impact of this single component within a larger, multi-dimensional education intervention. Optimal full matching leads to a more balanced match across pre-treatment characteristics than more common matching exercises that use one-to-one matching. This improved match quality has implications for the resulting treatment effects. Using this approach, we show that the bicycle programme improved attendance and girls’ sense of empowerment, but unlike other bicycle programmes implemented independently, there was no evidence of improved learning.