The table indicates that the typical study household is Hindu (68 percent), has on average five household members, and is headed by a male household member (90 percent). Household heads are almost always married (91 percent), are 45 years old on average and have 6 years of education on average. 41 percent of household heads belong to Scheduled castes/tribes, while General Caste and Other Backward Castes represent 24 and 34 percent of the sample respectively. The vast majority of households (96 percent) live in a dwelling they own. Dwellings are of moderate to high quality, with 66 percent of households living in a dwelling constructed with a mix of high-quality and low-quality materials (semi-pucca) and for 18 percent living in a dwelling constructed from high quality materials (pucca). Around 59 percent of the MF client sample holds a Below Poverty Line (BPL) card, while 28 percent has an Above Poverty Line (APL) card. The typical household’s earnings come to a very large extent from agriculture-related activities, with 52 percent of the sample reporting receiving wages from agricultural labour and/or from cultivation or allied agricultural activities. Another important source of income (28 percent) are wages from employment outside agriculture.

Using toilet construction date, we create an indicator of toilet ownership before the start of the intervention.<sup>24</sup> We observe that only 25 percent of control group households owned a toilet at baseline. Remarkably, this matches closely with the 2012 baseline survey conducted by the Indian Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, which shows that on average 27.4 percent of households in the study GPs reported to have a toilet in 2012 (SBM and Sanitation, 2014). Sanitation interventions are ultimately interested in safe toilet uptake, not just any type of latrine ownership. Following the guidelines provided in WHO/UNICEF [2017] to define a safe toilet, we find that 99.6 percent of all reported toilets in our study area belong to any of these categories.<sup>25</sup><sup>_,_26</sup> Therefore, the measure of toilet ownership (as reported by head of household and by interviewer observation) can be interpreted as equivalent to safe toilet ownership in our study context.

Columns 2 and 3 indicate at most small, and statistically insignificant differences in the means of these variables across the treatment and control group. This confirms that the randomisation was successful in creating observationally equivalent groups. Importantly, we find no significant difference in toilet ownership between the two experimental groups prior to intervention roll-out.

# **4 Theoretical Framework**

We develop a simple model to provide guidance on how the intervention may impact household borrowing and investment behaviour. It allows us to not only assess the likely overall effects of the intervention

> in Table OA-B.2 in the Online Appendix.

> 23Reassuringly, we also find no systematic differences in observed characteristics between the two groups when we repeat the same exercise with baseline data collected prior to the intervention roll-out for a sub-sample of clients and their households. These results are available on request.

> 24This retrospective measure of toilet ownership at baseline matches well with data collected in a baseline survey of panel households.

> 25The guidelines define a toilet to be safe when is is an improved facility for which excreta is safely disposed of in situ or off-site. Based on this definition, in our data we consider the following types of toilets safe: Flush/pour flush to piped sewer system, septic tank, pit latrine, VIP, pit latrine with slab, composting toilet, biogas system, urine diversion dehydration.

> 26 We can use the pre-intervention data available for a sub-set of clients as well as the endline data for this exercise.

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