activities, becoming vendors, and traveling outside the village. The _prescriptive norms_ sub-index (4 items, α = .61) assessed perceptions of other men and women believing that women _should_ engage in, i.e., social approval versus censure of, such activities.

_Social cohesion and community closeness_ (9 items, α = .47) assessed social interdependence and collectivism, expectations of social support, feelings of trust and closeness, experienced tension (reversed), and number of enemies (reversed). Interdependence and collectivism items measure how individuals view themselves in relation to others, i.e., as similar, connected, and responsive versus separate, unique, and autonomous; they reflect culturallyspecific forms of motivation that were integrated into the design of the psychosocial interventions. Additionally, the number of enemies, or people who wish to sabotage your success, was included as a locally relevant indicator of social cohesion (Adams, 2005), particularly given that enemies can arise from envy and resentment following inequalities in new economic opportunities or resources.

_Collective action_ (5 items, α = .34) assessed community engagement and support through the number of groups belonged to, the number of leadership positions held, monetary and volunteer contributions to community projects, and self-reported collective initiative. This measure assessed women’s engagement in community leadership as well as the potential of the interventions to create indirect benefits to communities.

_Intra-household dynamics_ (6 items, α = .33) assessed perceived quality of intrahousehold relationships with one’s partner (3 items, α = .09) and one’s household (3 items, α = .25). Items included feelings of trust, closeness, and support as well as experienced conflicts (reversed). Given that many economic and behavioral decisions are made at the household level in the study setting, this measure gauged the extent to which beneficiaries felt aligned with and supported by members of their household in decision-making or experienced tensions (reversed). It also assessed the Inclusion of Other in Self visual scale and sense of trust as indicators of intrahousehold closeness and positive relationality (Aron et al., 1992).

# **<mark>Study 3: Mechanism experiment</mark>**

This study was pre-registered in the AEA RCT registry: https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3570. It received approval from Stanford University Institutional Review Board (#44074).

_Participants_ . The study includes 2,628 women in 33 villages across six communes (see Appendix B for a map of the commune locations). Study respondents were recruited from the pool of program recipients in villages assigned to the Psychosocial and Full arms of the policy experiment, i.e., those program modalities that included psychosocial components. Women participants were from low-income households within each village. Eighty-five percent of these households were found to fall below Niger’s national poverty line (Bossuroy et al., 2022). Women in this sample were on average 34 years old (SD=14.11) and had 0.64 years of education (SD=1.97). The average household size was 9.54 members (SD=4.64). Most participants were not heads of their household (88%) and were not nomadic (89%). The average distance to the nearest market from each village was 73 minutes (SE=3.52) and to the nearest water source was 12 minutes (SE=1.14). Among those who participated in the endline survey, a minority (16%) of women respondents owned a personal cellphone. While religious identification was not asked, a vast majority of Nigeriens practice Islam.

36