Most of the data used in the analysis comes from the surveys conducted after the wheat distribution. Table 2 presents information on the number of surveys completed in each type of village. Although the number of villages in which wheat could not be delivered was relatively low, there were numerous villages in which wheat was delivered but which could not be surveyed due to security or logistical problems. In total, male surveys were conducted in 400 villages and female surveys in 356 villages.

There was no significant difference between different groups of villages in the number of surveys per village that were administered to the random sample of village households and to listed recipients. However, the number of surveys of peer-reported recipients was somewhat higher in villages without elected councils (the difference is significant at the 10 percent level), which suggests that the official list of wheat recipients was more accurate in villages with elected councils.

# _VI.3 – Additional Sources of Data_

Information on which households were identified as vulnerable _ex-ante_ is from the endline survey of the NSP impact evaluation, conducted ten days before the first visit for the food aid distribution. The survey was administered to the male head of household and his wife (or to another senior woman in the same household) separately in ten randomly selected households in each village. The respondents were asked to indicate five households that they considered to be the most needy in the village, the data for which is used to construct an indicator that measures the share of respondents that indicated a recipient household as needy.

Quantitative data collected on the third visit is complemented by qualitative accounts provided by enumerators. Such accounts suggest general compliance with the prescribed variation in the identity of leaders, responsible for aid distribution. In villages with no elected council, the village headman would generally oversee the distribution, along with village elders. In villages with elected councils, both the head of the elected council and the village headman were involved. This joint participation was only curtailed when the elected council was mandated to manage the distribution. Women were generally not involved in the process unless mandated, but were perceived as being better at identifying poor or widowed households than male leaders. Enumerators indicated that ordinary villagers were rarely actively involved in the decisionmaking process. Villagers usually were just called to receive the wheat allocated to them and, even in the case that they were present during deliberations, they would not actively participate in the decision-making. Enumerators perceived that leaders purposefully excluded villagers in order to avoid conflict and disagreement, but that villagers had a good knowledge of who was in charge of the distribution.

# **VII. Results**

# _VII.1 - Targeting_

# <u>Objective Targeting</u>

The first hypothesis posits that the interventions – mandating that the elected council oversees the distribution; existence of councils without explicit requirements on who manages the distribution; and mandating female participation in villages with customary leadership – will improve targeting of aid to needy villagers as measured by observable characteristics. To test this, we test whether the interventions increase the likelihood that a food aid recipient’s measures of assets exceed the village median, reduce the probability that a recipient belongs to a vulnerable group, and increase the level of an omnibus indicator of economic status (which incorporates information on assets, vulnerability, education and the necessity to borrow money for food) for recipients relative to the median. As described in Section V, we use three alternate definitions to identify recipients: (i) self-reported recipients; (ii) listed recipients; and (iii) peer-reported recipients. Table 3 presents estimates of the effect of the interventions on measures of objective targeting.

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