days per month). 35.0 percent of subjects operate their own business enterprise; among these businesses, only 11.6 percent have any employees. 16.7 percent of participants have bank savings accounts,<sup>17</sup> and 52.8 percent are members of rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs).<sup>18</sup> Most experimental subjects in our sample live amongst their kin, and are embedded in interhousehold transfer networks. The median participant has seven relatives living outside her household but in the same village: two close relatives (parents, parents-in-law, adult children, grandparents, siblings, aunts, and uncles) and another five more distant relatives. 43.8 percent of subjects had received a transfer in the last three months, while 89.8 percent report making a transfer to another household over the same period.<sup>19</sup> The median household making a transfer had given 363 shillings, while the median household receiving a transfer had been given 600 shillings. In the three months prior to being surveyed, 42.4 percent of subjects’ households had been asked for a gift or loan, and 89.7 percent of households had contributed money to a “harambee,” a local fundraising drive.<sup>20</sup> Table 1 reports tests of balance across our six experimental treatments.<sup>21</sup> The randomization was successful, generating minimal differences in observables across treatments. Of 68 tests (34 for each gender) reported, we observe only five significant differences in observables across treatments.

> 17Dupas and Robinson (forthcoming) found that less than 3 percent of the daily wage earners sampled in Bumala, Kenya, had savings accounts. While Bumala is just a few kilometers from the region where the present study took place, their data were collected over two years before our household survey. The daily wage earners (primarily market vendors and bicycle taxi drivers) included in their study may also be somewhat worse off than our subjects.

> 18Gugerty (2007) surveys ROSCA participants in Busia and Teso Districts in western Kenya; she argues that the social component of ROSCA participation helps individuals overcome savings constraints. Anderson and Baland (2002) show income-earning women living in Nairobi slums use ROSCAs to protect their savings from their husbands. Dupas and Robinson (forthcoming) show that female daily income earners make more productive investments when given access to even a costly savings account.

> 19There are several reasons for the asymmetry between the probability of making a transfer and the probability or receiving a transfer. First, households comprising only children and/or the ill or handicapped could not participate (because only those adults who could be physically present for the session and were able to hear the oral instructions could take part), but are likely to be net recipients of transfers. Another reason is that most households in any village will make a small transfer toward the funeral expenses of their neighbors; since funerals are relatively rare events, we would expect to see an asymmetry between the likelihood of giving and receiving in the short-term. Finally, transfer data are quite noisy, and households are more likely to report transfers made than transfers received (Comola and Fafchamps 2011).

> 20A _harambee_ is a self-help effort in which community members contribute money or resources to assist a particular person in need. They may be for sending a child to school, paying for a wedding, or any number of other purposes. The concept existed within a number of different tribal groups in Kenya, but was made into a national rallying cry by Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta (Ngau 1987).

> 21We show that the randomization of the price of avoiding making an announcement was successful, though the randomization was not stratified, in Table 2 of Appendix III (online).

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