THE CHILD GRANT PLUS ICDP BASED PARENTING PROGRAMME IN NEPAL
ECONOMIC EVALUATION AND COST OF FUTURE SCALE UP
October 2025
Authors: This report was prepared by Camilla Nystrand and Jan Klavus.
Other contributors: Hemanta Dangal, Anita Tamang and Disa Sjoblom.
Link to the study: https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/pdf/Child_Grant_Plus-Parenting_Nepal_Economic_Evaluation_9_Dec_2025.pdf
Summary
Background: The Child Grant Plus Parenting Programme (CG Plus) is a Save the Children initiative designed to augment the impact of the Nepal government’s Child Grant cash transfer programme for children under five years, introduced in 2009. CG Plus is implemented with parents who receive the cash transfer and aims to strengthen children’s socio-emotional, cognitive, language and motor development while also improving child nutrition practices and household financial management.
Objective: Previous impact evaluations suggest that, compared with the Child Grant alone, CG Plus may lead to substantially greater improvements in child development outcomes. This study aimed to assess the economic impact of CG Plus in terms of its short- and long-term cost-effectiveness, based on the programme’s 2022–2024 impact evaluation. In addition, the study examined the implementation costs of scaling up CG Plus across Nepal.
Methods: Impact evaluation data were collected at three time points: pre-intervention (baseline), mid-term (one year post-baseline), and post-intervention (two years post-baseline). At baseline, 962 parents participated in the study. The short-term cost-effectiveness of CG Plus, compared with the Child Grant only, was assessed as the additional cost required for a one-unit improvement in child development outcomes. For the long-term evaluation, a cost–benefit analysis was conducted to compare the additional costs and benefits of the parenting programme. The main analyses focused on three key outcomes: (1) average net benefits, (2) benefit-cost ratio and (3) cost-effectiveness multiplier.
Results: The short-term evaluation compared the direct effects of the intervention, measured as child development outcomes, to the cost of implementing the intervention. The analysis indicated that additional (intervention) costs of about NPR 6 800 (US$ 48) generated one additional unit on the z-score scale, reflecting the improvement achieved in child development. For the long-term analysis, data from the impact evaluation and national statistics were used to project the potential cost–benefit of CG Plus in terms of human capital development. The average cost per child in the CG Plus was approximately NPR 12 000 (US$ 94). Relative to these costs, the programme was estimated to yield, on average, three additional years of schooling. Over a lifetime, children benefiting from the CG Plus were projected to experience a 7% increase in lifetime earnings. When comparing the intervention and additional schooling costs with the benefits generated of increased earnings, the results suggested a return of roughly US$ 12 to every US$ 1 invested. A cost-effectiveness multiplier analysis further indicated that the Government of Nepal would need to spend an additional NPR 30 000 per child on the Child Grant to achieve the same impact generated by NPR 12 000 invested in CG Plus. In terms of implementation costs, running the CG Plus for three consecutive years cost only one-fifth of the amount required for the Child Grant cash transfer programme. Scaling the intervention to the Madhesh province level was estimated to cost approximately NPR 1 350 (US$ 10) per child.
Conclusions: The economic evaluation of the CG Plus programme provides strong evidence of favourable impacts on both human and economic capital in the short and long term. Even under conservative assumptions—where bserved effects are halved—CG Plus remains a highly costeffective investment compared with the Child Grant alone.