# **5.2 Summary Statistics**

Table 1 shows that the average woman in the sample is 32 years old, while her husband is 38 years old. She married at age 19 and has 9 years of education, one less than her husband. Her sons are, on average, eight years old, while her daughters are six. Only twenty women reported not having any children at all; the average number of children is 1.15, with an average age of 7.42. The average woman’s house has three rooms and electricity. Sons and daughters have, on average, equal amounts of education; about three years.

Table 2 indicates that participants are significantly more empowered than non-participants. While on average, 61 percent of the women in the sample said they had NREGS cards, only 49 percent of non-participants did. In contrast, over 68 percent of participants had these cards. Similarly, while 71 percent of the sample said they did not need permission to leave the house, this was true for only 59 percent of non-participants while 78 percent of participants did not need permission. Finally, while only 14 percent of non-participants reported attending village council meetings, almost half of all participants did. In summary, whether in the form of access to employment, physical mobility, or political participation, women who participate in _Mahila Samakhya_ have higher levels of empowerment. However, these statistics do not tell us whether more empowered women self-select into the program, or whether participation actually improves female autonomy.

Table 3 shows us balance across key characteristics of the four treated and two untreated districts in the sample. The only two significant differences are in the number of sons and the time spent on collecting firewood. On average, participants have 0.27 sons more than non-participants and spend significantly more time collecting firewood. The magnitude of the difference in the number sons suggests the economic impact, if any, is small. However, the difference in time to collect firewood is large, making it important to control for the differences in time constraints. We discuss this variable in further detail in the next section. Overall, table 3 suggests that the program does not appear to be targeted in placement because there are no other significant differences between women in treated and untreated districts. These data illustrate that the women we sample in treated and untreated districts are largely similar in covariates.

Another source of endogeneity could arise from the potential placement of the program in villages where women have a relatively high level of bargaining power and thus are more likely to respond favorably to the treatment. We use administrative block-level<sup>10</sup> data from the Indian censuses of 1991 and 2001 on village-level female bargaining power. Matching the year that _Mahila Samakhya_ entered a block to the most recent census before that year, we compare the levels of bargaining power in blocks blocks which later received _Mahila Samakhya_ with those that did not. Results for t-tests of equality, presented in table 4, show that there are no significant differences in any of the block-level measures of female bargaining power: sex ratio for the entire population and for children up to the age of six, the scheduled caste or scheduled tribe sex ratio, and the literacy ratio are all statistically similar across treatment assignment. Similarly, the sex ratio of workers and non-workers also does not vary between treated and untreated blocks. Thus, these t-tests also fail to yield evidence that would cause us to believe that the program was systematically targeted at villages where women were either less empowered or already more empowered, and hence more likely to respond to the treatment.

> 10Blocks are small groups of villages and are the administrative unit directly above the village council. Within each district, the placement decision of _Mahila Samakhya_ is made by block, rather than by village, hence these blocks are the appropriate unit of analysis when examining whether the program is targeted in any way. For blocks without the program, we use data from the 2001 census.

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