demanded. Nevertheless, we do have data on the uses of the transfer and the amount spent on a subset of items. While this constrains our analysis, we feel that these outcomes are useful for two reasons. First, the transfer represented a significant income shock to recipient households, equivalent to one week of pretransfer household income. Given this fact, as well as the fact that households only had 1.7 income sources (prior to the program) and did not receive external aid from other international organizations, it is reasonable to assume that households’ marginal propensity to consume was high and that the uses of the transfer would approximate overall expenditures during this period.<sup>26</sup> Second, as program recipients faced similar prices at the market and voucher fairs (appendix S1) and there were no reported stock-outs for the last transfer (other than intended “forbidden items”), the uses of the transfer capture voucher households’ decision-making under constrained choice.<sup>27</sup> As the cash transfer was unconditional, program recipients were free to spend the transfer how they wished. Focusing on the last transfer, _cash_ households used their transfer to purchase 6.98 different categories of goods, including food items (staple and other grains, beans, oil, meat, salt and fish), clothing and school fees (table 2, panel A). (Respondents could list more than one use of the cash transfer, so the total can exceed 100%.) Less than 1 percent of households used the cash transfer to buy “temptation goods,” defined in this context as doughnuts and beer.<sup>28</sup> Thus, cash transfer recipients primarily used the transfer to ensure immediate consumption needs, but also to invest in non-food items and their children’s education.<sup>29</sup>

> 26 Over 70 percent of pre-program income was spent on food, suggesting that households were likely near subsistence constraints and had a high marginal utility of income.

> 27 Understanding how _voucher_ households optimize under such constraints, which is partially captured by the uses of the transfer, is often difficult to measure in other cash versus in-kind transfer research. For example, Cunha (2014) and Hoddinott et al. (2014) assess the impacts of a food versus cash-transfer program, so cannot observe the purchasing decisions of food transfer households (as they were provided directly with food). Rather, they focus on the impact of the program on the quantities consumed and diet diversity. Hidrobo et al. (2014) primarily compare the value of food _consumption_ among cash, voucher, and food households, rather than their purchasing patterns, which does not directly provide insights into the ways in which the voucher program constrained households’ choices.

28 It is possible that we observe no consumption of temptation goods because households were afraid to report the consumption of these goods. While we cannot rule out this possibility, we are primarily concerned with differential spending on temptation goods between the two modalities, rather than the spending on temptation goods _per se_ . This is in line with evidence from other cash transfer programs (Evans and Popova 2014).

29 A potential concern with this measure is that program recipients could simply list the first or largest expenditures made after receiving the transfer, which could differ by treatment groups. Thus, we might see a treatment effect on 16