The impact of US sanctions on poverty

In this paper, we analyze the effect of US economic sanctions on the target countries' poverty gap during the period 1982-2011. Econometrically, we employ a matching approach to account for differences in the countries' economic and political environment and the likelihood of being exposed to US sanctions. Our results indicate that US sanctions are adversely affecting those living in poverty as we observe a 3.8 percentage point (pp) larger poverty gap in sanctioned countries compared to a control group that is as close as possible in terms of observable pretreatment characteristics. In addition, we show that the impact of sanctions on poverty (i) increases with the severity of sanctions, (ii) is larger for multilateral sanctions than for unilateral sanctions imposed by only the United States, and (iii) is long-lasting as the poverty gap increases over the first 21 years of a sanction regime.