landless households could see fewer benefits from microfinance and input/output procurement activities.<sup>9</sup> To control for unobservable personal characteristics, we also include an indicator of whether women in the household participated in community meetings at the village level (Panchayat Gram Sabha) in 2000, based on recall data, which we interpret as a proxy for initial empowerment levels.<sup>10</sup> We also include indicators of participation in government programs, specifically an employment and a school meal program, in 2004.

Since we are interested in looking at whether length of participation in group activities makes a difference, we consider three main comparisons, or "treatments":

- Households who had members in a group in 2004 and were still members in 2008 ( _early joiners_ ) compared to households that never participated (i.e., at least four years of exposure to the program versus none)

- Households that joined during 2004-2006 ( _mid-joiners_ ) compared to households that never participated (i.e., two to four years of exposure)

- Households that joined during 2007-2008 ( _late joiners_ ) compared to households that never participated (i.e., less than two years of exposure).

We expect impacts to be higher for early and mid-joiners than for late joiners, as they would have participated in a wider range of activities and gained greater awareness of programs and services over time.<sup>11</sup> Given the sampling design, we estimate propensity scores separately by poverty category (used as sub-classification, as suggested by Schuler, DuGoff, and Stuart, 2012). Table 6 describes the sample sizes for each comparison and poverty category. The 4,259 households for which we have full data include 161 households which were in the program in 2004 but dropped out later, which provide an interesting alternative "control" group.<sup>12</sup> While sample sizes are not huge, they are reasonable for each poverty category.<sup>13</sup>

> 9 As time progressed, project staff made increasing efforts to reach all target households, so self-selection into the program became less of an issue over time.  By 2008, however, the program had not reached all target households: the percentage of poorest and poor households sampled who were group members ranged from 28 to 96 percent across blocks, with a third of all poorest and a fourth of all poor households sampled not in the program. 10 Results are very similar if we include in the propensity score matching regressions a woman's ability to set aside money for her own use, or whether she raised issues in Gram Sabha meetings, or a combination of these variables. Using empowerment variables referring to 2003 also yields similar results.

> 11 Information on the number of activities each households benefited from by 2008 confirms that households with early and mid-joiners benefited from 4.1 activities compared to3.3 for late joiners.

> 12 Dropout households were slightly better off in terms of poverty category, caste, education, but not significantly different.  They were of course different in that they decided the program was not useful to them—a feature we exploit later.

> 13 We group together not-so-poor and not poor under the label "not-so-poor".

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