second row of Table 4 shows that Tongan households participating in the RSE were 10 to 11 percentage points more likely to have made a dwelling improvement over the two years of our surveys. This represents an almost doubling of the percentage of non-RSE households which made dwelling improvements over the same period (12 percent). Home improvements were the most commonly mentioned main use of money from the RSE in Vanuatu, with participants saying that they were using money earned to do things such as build a new house, install a solar panel, add an iron roof, or renovate their house. However, although the point estimates suggest that RSE households were 7-8 percentage points more likely to make a dwelling improvement, this effect is only marginally significant when using the binary categorization of RSE status. We do see a significant positive effect using duration in RSE. Dwelling improvements are reported to be much more commonplace in Vanuatu than in our Tongan survey, with 79 percent of nonRSE households making a dwelling improvement over the two years of our surveys.<sup>15</sup> The impact of the RSE may also then be for households to make more substantive improvements, such as the transition from traditional to modern dwellings, which our surveys don’t directly capture since dwelling type was only recorded at baseline.

In the baseline survey, 65 percent of Tongan RSE households reported having a bank account. By the fourth round this had increased to 83 percent. Row 4 of Table 4 shows this represents a statistically significant 10-14 percentage point increase relative to non-RSE households over the two year period. This increase in bank account usage likely reflects bank accounts being set up for the purpose of household savings, rather than bank accounts directly being used to receive remittances. For the Tongan sample, over 90 percent of remittances were made via Melei mei Langi (a Tongan-run money transfer operator) or Western Union, and only 1 household in our sample directly transferred money through a bank. In Vanuatu we find the share of RSE households with a bank account increasing from 55 percent in the baseline to 74 percent for the same households two years later. This is estimated to be a statistically significant 17-18 percentage point increase relative to the non-RSE households over the same period. Although 22 percent of ni-Vanuatu RSE households receiving remittances received them through a bank transfer (Western Union was the main source of transfers), this effect of the RSE on bank account usage continues to hold even if we control for whether the household received a bank transfer remittance. Therefore, as in Tonga, it is likely that this increase in household bank account usage reflects the use of banks for savings, rather than just to receive remittances.

The remainder of Table 4 considers durable asset ownership. Each follow-up round asked households if they had made any major purchase of assets since the last survey, defined as valued at 200 pa’anga or more in Tonga or 10,000 vatu or more in Vanuatu. Row 3 of Table 4 shows that Tongan RSE households were 12-15 percentage points more likely to have made such

> 15 This reflects the much higher proportion of households living in traditional (bush material) dwellings in Vanuatu, which have short life expectancy compared with modern dwellings.

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