other hand, continued along the same (slower) trajectory as before, leading them to fall behind the VG households; While we do not have any source of exogenous variation that enables us to identify the causal effect of the SBM program, this descriptive evidence is consistent with the hypothesis of SBM having induced a successful sanitation drive in our study areas among subsidy eligible households; Though, two years from the 2019 deadline to become open defecation free (ODF), toilet coverage among the MF client sample remains at less than 50% in control GPs in our study area; (ii) In treatment communities, in contrast, the provision of micro-credit for sanitation allowed households officially classified as non-VG to not only keep up with, but even exceed the upward toilet uptake trend observed among their VG counterparts. We also observe a higher trend in toilet coverage amongst treated VGs relative to those in control, but given the already higher trend for VGs in control from mid-2014 onwards, there was less scope for micro-credit to make a difference in terms of toilet uptake, on average. It is possible that VG households in treatment sites decided to use sanitation loans to cover the construction of toilets instead of using alternative funding sources (e.g. government funding) which they would have used otherwise (like their counterparts in the control group). This would be consistent with an increase in sanitation loan uptake, without an increase in toilet uptake even if VG households in treatment areas did use the loan to construct a toilet.

**Sanitation behaviour** An important policy concern is whether these newly constructed toilets are also used. We analyse intervention impacts on two related indicators, namely whether the household reports that the toilet is in use, and cross-checked by interviewer observation, and whether anyone in the households reportedly goes for open defecation. Impact estimates are shown in Table 6. We find that for both indicators, estimated coefficients are closely in line with the impact estimates on toilet uptake, implying that constructed toilets tend to be used by households and hence lead to an accompanied drop in open defecation.

**Sanitation uptake and subsidy uptake in the SBM 2016 snapshot** Finally, in Table 4 we verify the robustness of our results to a different, independently collected measure of toilet uptake – household toilet ownership as recorded by Government officials in the SBM September 2016 snapshot. In addition, we evaluate impacts over time and assess impacts on subsidy uptake. Results on toilet ownership as recorded in the SBM snapshot are presented in columns 3-4 of Table 4. To compare these results to our survey data, in columns 1-2 we present impacts on toilet ownership in September 2016, re-constructed based on the age of toilet construction reported during endline survey. Comparing column 1 to column 3 and column 2 to column 4, we find that results are strikingly similar between the two independently collected datasets.

Interestingly, comparing the longer term impact results in column 3 of Table 4 to the shorter term impact results in column 1 of Table 4 suggests that 84% of the impact on toilet uptake was achieved over the first 19 months of the intervention (February 2015 - September 2016). The more modest additional increase in toilet construction in treatment areas relative to control areas in 2017 could be due to a drought that took place in our study area and to demonetisation in November - December 2016, which greatly reduced MFI lending in the study areas.

Turning to columns 5-6 in Table 4, we look at impacts on subsidy uptake. Interestingly, for subsidy 15