A large six-nation study has showed that huge help can be provided to the very poorest of the poor to meet their basic needs for survival by providing them goats, sheep, chickens or other livestock. Training could also be provided to them under a program to help them make money by using the above mentioned items.

Economist Dean Karlan of Yale University and the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action has to say that such an approach does not mean complete eradication of poverty, but will certainly reduce the impact of impoverishment by a big margin for participants.

An independent evaluation of the anti-poverty strategy was conducted by Karlan and colleagues to see its efficacy in a variety of settings. More than 10,000 households were included in their review, belonging to Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan and Peru.

A paper, published on Thursday to describe the study results, showed that the participating group saw considerable improvement in their quality of life based on a gamut of measures. The study focused on things like household spending, value of assets, how often participants went to bed hungry, amount of time spent working, income, and physical health.

Christopher Blattman of Columbia University, who studies poverty but didn't participate in the new research, said the study results are very exciting and need to be seen as a great anti-poverty strategy.

This strategy is widely used in Bangladesh and has yielded incredible results. Stephen Smith of George Washington University, an adviser to the American affiliate of BRAC, an organization that uses the strategy in Bangladesh, said it is not beyond the realms of possibility to better the plight of people badly impacted by poverty. The program leads to self-employment or eventually jobs.

The findings of the study are also encouraging because the approach works across a range of cultural, political, and economic variables that have been the greatest obstacles in the way of eliminating poverty.