efficacy of this large-scale intervention at an early stage is critical from a policy perspective. Our study provides short-run results based on data from three states where the program has had considerable reach and intensive support through the NRLP. The gradual roll-out of the program over the last five years gives us an opportunity to rigorously analyze the impact and we find four noteworthy results.

First, the intervention has been able to achieve its objective of retaining women in the labor force by increasing opportunities for self-employment, including transitioning agriculture to higher value activities and investments. Our estimates suggest that overall 5.5 percent more women are working (part-time and full-time) due to the intervention overall, with a 7.7 percent increase evident for women of productive ages (15-64 years old), and these effects remain strong in all our robustness checks.

Second, we find large and significant increases in the amount and share of formal savings, probably because of SHGs as a commitment device and as more women have opened bank accounts. Consistent with almost all other studies on the self-help groups, we find that the overall amount and productivity of borrowing at the household level have increased. Similar to Hoffmann et al. (2017), we find a large and significant reduction in the average interest paid by households in the treatment areas. However, the impacts on these aspects are not very different for any sub-population.

Third, contrary to previous studies on similar programs, we find weaker results in the asset status of households. We do find minor increases in livestock assets and consumptive assets, but no increase in other productive assets and nature of landholdings. As the primary mechanism to build assets was through loans, it is possible that the average loan size at INR 12,830 is too small to purchase big and productive assets.

Lastly, we find significant results in median household income as well as large and significant increases for the 30<sup>th</sup> , 40<sup>th</sup> , and 75<sup>th</sup> percentiles. However, we do not find results or trends on annual income of households in the overall population. As the average exposure of the program in the treatment areas is only around 2.5 years and the implementation of technical livelihoods interventions is still at a nascent stage, it is possible that in the long-run some of these results in assets and income might strengthen and downstream impacts might arise.

For future policy discussions, we have some concluding thoughts. First, the focus of future interventions needs to shift from pure access to loans to more targeted borrowing and probably bigger size loans. Second, the program needs to build on increased labor force participation and use it to enhance income generation for participants by accelerating the technical and livelihoods interventions; efforts are also needed to document the impacts of these sub-interventions. New interventions are piloting and testing interventions in these two areas (World Bank 2018). Finally, the ongoing and future impact evaluations of these large-scale government programs need to have a broader focus on labor force participation and income; in particular to better understand the long-term impacts of these programs.

# **6 References**

> Anderson, Siwan. 2011. "Caste as an Impediment to Trade." _American Economic Journal: Applied Economics_ 3 (1):239-63. Arnold, Catherine, Tim Conway, and Matthew Greenslade. 2011. "Cash transfers literature review." Baird, Sarah, Craig McIntosh, and Berk Özler. 2011. "Cash or condition? Evidence from a cash transfer experiment." _The Quarterly Journal of Economics_ :qjr032.

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