providing cash transfers with alternative combinations of business training and other capacity building activities (Blattman et al. 2014, Fafchamps et al. 2011, Macours, Premand, and Vakis 2012, De Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff 2008).

Lastly, a multi-sectoral approach has been recently adopted by a few programs (more specifically, in South Asia), as they combine micro-loans and savings, asset transfers, business training, and social networks into one set of interventions. The majority of these programs target women and are implemented through women-only community groups such as self-help groups (SHGs). It has been argued that the integrated approach is more likely to generate sustainable impacts on female labor force participation, livelihoods, income and assets and other indicators of household welfare. Several empirical studies have estimated the welfare impacts of such community based multi-sectoral rural livelihood interventions (Datta 2013, 2015, Parajuli et al. 2012, Prennushi and Gupta 2014, Deininger and Liu 2013b, a, Desai and Joshi 2012, Hoffmann et al. 2017, Khanna, Kochhar, and Palaniswamy 2015). Most of these report significant effect on size of the asset and skills development but impacts on consumption and income are more elusive. A recently published six country study shows that the multi-sectoral approach to rural livelihoods when combined with assets transfer instead of only micro-loans can have positive returns and long-term effects on household income and assets (Banerjee et al. 2015).

Despite the large-scale and continued presence of community development and rural livelihoods projects over several years, evidence of the effects of such programs on key economic outcomes like income, labor force participation and seasonal migration remains limited. Policy makers have often cited that “policy initiatives focused on microfinancesupported self-help group-centered activities are required to make females economically active along with handling domestic duties and help to address the need for working finance as expressed by the females willing to accept work” (Sanghi, Srija, and Vijay 2015).

To date, only two studies have attempted to examine the impacts of livelihood interventions on female labor outcomes in India. Both the studies focus on initiatives that were implemented by SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) in Gujarat (Ahmedabad) and rural Rajasthan and reported mixed results. The Ahmedabad study has shown positive results for the female labor participation rate (in the longer-run), especially through increased household business activity(Field, Martinez, and Pande 2016). The rural Rajasthan study concluded that there were negligible differences in female labor participation attributable to the initiatives, but could not conclusively disentangle the effect of intervention from the confounding impact of Mahatma Gandhi Rural National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) (Desai and Joshi 2012).

This study seeks to add to this nascent literature by providing empirical evidence of short to medium run impacts of the intensive model of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), the largest multi-sector rural livelihoods intervention,<sup>3</sup> at two levels: (i) intermediate outcomes such as labor force participation, savings, access to loans and migration; and (ii) final outcomes such as assets, entrepreneurship, and household income. The study also reports distributional impacts of the intensive model of NRLM in order to account for specific design features that include focus on poor and landless rural households.

> 3 The initial pilot of the intensive model was funded by the World Bank and is now being gradually scaled up nationally. For more details, see World Bank (2011). The intensive model is described later in the text and refers to the intensive nature of technical assistance provided to support the implementation of the program.

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