Jeevika Livelihoods Project Phase 2 Evaluation (RCT), Bihar, India - Baseline and Endline Household And Village Data 2011-2014

Poverty and empowerment impacts of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project: Evidence from a Mixed-Methods Cluster-Randomized Trial Jeevika is a World Bank assisted project focussed (now under the umbrella of the NRLM) on building networks of women's self-help credit and savings groups,and then using them as a base of other "vertical" interventions. This houshold and village survey data was collected over two rounds to conduct an impact evaluation of Phase 2 of the project with random assignment of the project over a two year period. Collaboration: World Bank Social Observatory team with Government of Bihar. Evaluation design, methods and implementation In order to evaluate the impacts of Jeevika, 180 panchayats were randomly selected from within 16 blocks in seven districts where scale-up of the project was planned but had not yet occurred. Some of these blocks were in districts relatively far from Patna, which had not yet been entered by the project (Madhepura, Saharsa, Supaul), while others were within the larger districts within which Jeevika was already operating (Gaya, Nalanda, Madhubani, Muzaffarpur). The project had already entered these districts in Phase 1, but had not yet expanded to all blocks due to (project) capacity constraints. Within each of the study villages, hamlets (tolas) in which the majority of the population belonged to a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe were identified. This was the same procedure as used by Jeevika to identify the target population (of poor women) for mobilization into the project. Tolas were identified through a focus group discussion held in each village, along with the population of target castes (SC/STs) within each. In Bihar, tola boundaries are easily distinguishable. Field teams would enter the tola at a random point, determine the skip pattern based on the population size and target sample size, and select households through a random walk. Survey staff aimed to include 70% SC/ST households, and 30% households from other castes in each village, in order to ensure variation in socio-economic status within the sample. If the households in selected tolas included fewer SC/ST households than this, households from nearby non-SC/ST majority tolas were also included in the sample. Interviews for the quantitative study were conducted using a structured paper survey form. Baseline and follow up surveys included detailed questions on debt, asset holdings, consumption expenditures, livelihood activities, and women’s mobility, role in household decisions, and aspirations. In addition, in each village, a focus group discussion was conducted, through which data were collected on village level attributes such as local sources of credit, interest rates from each source, local wage rates, and the presence of or distance to markets and other institutions and amenities. Respondents were not compensated for their time. If a respondent was unavailable during initial field visit, the supervisor recorded contact details and returned with interviewers at a later date. As long as the survey team was in that district, repeat visits were undertaken, keeping attrition to a minimum. If a household could not be re-surveyed at endline, it was replaced with another household in the same village. Short re-surveys containing a subset of questions from the main survey were conducted by supervisors for 10% of the sample. Staff from the project also conducted occasional visits after the survey was completed in a village to confirm that all modules had been covered by survey staff. Data was entered in duplicate using CSPro and any discrepancies were corrected based on the paper form. Following the baseline survey, panchayats were stratified on the 16 administrative blocks in the sample and the panchayat-level mean of outstanding high cost (monthly interest rate of 4% or higher) debt held by households at baseline. They were then randomly assigned to an early rollout group or a late rollout group using the random number generator within the Stata statistical analysis software package. The baseline survey was administered to 8988 households across 333 villages in 179 panchayats. The target number of households per panchayat was 50, but there was some variation around this in reality. The lowest number of households in a given panchayat was 49 (9 panchayats), and the largest number was 53 households (3 panchayats). To ensure that control panchayats were not entered by the project, Jeevika held a quarterly ""evaluation panchayat"" meeting, which block project managers of the 16 blocks were required to attend. At these meetings the project M&E team checked whether any village in a control panchayat had been entered, and received an update on progress in treatment panchayats. This procedure was successful in maintaining adherence to randomized treatment assignment throughout the evaluation period. Of the 4,472 households in the sample across 89 panchayats allocated to receive the SHG intervention,...