was made available in 2001 whereas 10 were randomly assigned to a control where the program could be accessed only from 2003.<sup>3</sup> To ensure sufficient coverage of the target group, poor households were oversampled using the lists that classified all villagers by poverty status based on census data.<sup>4</sup> The household sample consists of 1,877 and 529 households in treated and control mandals, respectively. Male and female parts of the instrument were administered separately – and as far as possible simultaneously – to the main male or female person in the household, normally the head and spouse.<sup>5</sup> Household-level outcome variables include consumption, nutritional intake, and assets. Consumption includes food and non-food consumption over the past 30 days and more lumpy items over the past year.<sup>6</sup> We compute the amount of calories and protein consumed by multiplying physical quantities of more than 30 food items in the questionnaire’s consumption section each with their caloric and protein content based on the main reference for Indian foods (Gopalan _et al._ 2004).<sup>7</sup> Non-financial assets include consumer durables, productive, and livestock assets.<sup>8</sup> Throughout, consumption and asset are expressed in per capita terms based on adult equivalent measures.<sup>9</sup> Household level outcome variables are illustrated in table 1 for control and treated mandals separately for the periods of 2003/2004 and 2005/2006. While nutritional intake was close for households in the control and treated mandals, total consumption was lower for the treated than the control in both years. Households in treated mandals owned more non-financial assets than those in the control mandals in both years. Table 2 summarizes household demographics and initial conditions for the whole sample, control and treated mandals separately. Although control mandals were supposed to be randomly selected,

> 2 While the CIF was initially made available to SHGs, it was shifted to VOs and later on to MSs as soon as these were established.

> 3 Three districts (Anantapur, Adilabad and Srikakulam) were chosen to represent the state’s three macro-regions and mandals were selected randomly. Out of the 51 sampled mandals, 41 were assigned to be treatment, implying that the program was made available from 2001 whereas 10 were randomly assigned to be controls implying that the program could be accessed only from 2003. Among the 10 control mandals, four are from Srikakulam, two from Anantapur, and four from Adilabad. Villages, groups, and households were then selected randomly in each mandal.

> 4 Sampling fractions are 0.4 for the ‘“poorest of the poor’”, 0.3 for the ‘poor’“poor”, 0.2 for ‘“not so poor’” households, and 0.1 for ‘“non- poor’” households. All descriptive statistics reported below are adjusted using thesecorresponding weights.

> 5 For example, information on health, consumption, and female empowerment, among others, was obtained from the female while information on agricultural production was obtained from the male.

> 6 Although the survey instrument is less disaggregated than that used by the National Sample Survey (NSS), it follows the overall structure used there.

> 7 For fruits or vegetables where the survey includes only aggregate spending, we use the 55th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS) to derive the price and caloric content of a representative basket of these consumed in Andhra Pradesh.

> 8 Financial assets were excluded due to concerns about misreporting. Asset values were measured as in December 2003 in the 2004 survey and in June 2006 in the 2006 survey.

> 9 The adult equivalent measures for caloric and protein consumption are obtained using nutritional requirements by sex and age as weights, i.e., weights are 1.2 for adult males, 0.9 for adult females, 1.0 for adolescents (12 to 21 years), 0.8 for children aged 9 to 12, 0.7 for children aged 7 to 9, 0.6 for children aged 5 to 7, 0.5 for children aged 3 to 5, and 0.4 for children younger than 3 (Gopalan _et al._ 2004). For income and overall consumption, we assign weights to be 0.78 for anyone older than 60 or younger than 14.

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