Pudhu Vaazhvu Project Phase 1 "Retrospective" Evaluation - Household Survey Data from Tamil Nadu, 2011

A Retrospective Impact Evaluation of the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Alleviation (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project This is a one period survey with retrospective questions of changes on changes over time, collected to do a "quick" evaluation of PVP Phase 1 project in Tamil Nadu. Collaboration: World Bank Social Observatory Team, with Govt of Tamil Nadu's Pudhu Vaazhvu project. Community based livelihood interventions, which focus directly on increasing income and employment, have become an increasingly important component of large-scale poverty reduction programmes. We evaluate the impact of a participatory livelihoods intervention- the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project (PVP) using propensity score matching methods. The paper explores the impact of PVP on its core goals of empowering women and the rural poor, improving their economic welfare, and facilitating public action. We find significant effects of PVP on reducing the incidence of high cost debt and diversifying livelihoods. We also find evidence of women’s empowerment, and increased political participation. Our data come from a survey implemented by PVP, in collaboration with the World Bank during the period December 2012-March 2013. This survey covered ten districts, out of the 16 total districts where PVP had implemented its interventions over the period 2006-2010. The sample districts were chosen to ensure representation from different geographic regions of PVP’s operationv. Since this survey was designed and implemented after this evaluation was designed, our data was collected from households in matched project and non-project block pairs in these districts. Within each district, the survey covered the matched block pair, and matched VPs within these blocks. As mentioned earlier, 12 to16 VPs that had the closest match on propensity scores were sampled. The lower bound of this range was defined at the number of VPs at which our sample would in effect have picked a census of VPs within the block, that is, we saturate the treatment VPs within a block. In each VP, we sample two villages, at random. In the case of VPs with only one village, our sample covers that single village. In each village, a household questionnaire was administered to a sample of 12 households; and to the elected president of the VP. In order to measure the impact of the project, which targets the disadvantaged poor, the household sample was drawn using stratified random sampling. Stratification was, therefore, used to oversample SC/ST households; and this was based on their population proportions within the village. With this oversampling, SC/ST households comprise a third of the sample. In all, we administered the household questionnaire to 3,692 households, drawn from 268 VPs. The household questionnaire had two components: (i) a general household module that included an LSMSvi type consumption module; and detailed information on the livelihoods portfolio and debt profile of the household, and (ii) a woman’s module that was administered to an adult married woman in the household, and measured different metrics of women’s empowerment. These measures included questions on decision-making within the household, and on women’s participation in local government and civic action. At the household level, we also collected retrospective data on assets and housing quality. Retrospective data on other outcomes, such as mobility, intra-household decision-making and public action- were not collected due to a higher likelihood of recall error on these measures. In addition to this household module, two other modules were administered. A village focus group discussion collected information on key infrastructure facilities in the village, and public good preferences. A VP president survey collected information on his/her political backgrounds and preferences. In PVP areas, we also collected data on the key activities of VPRC. We use data on 3,678 households, almost equally split between PVP and non-PVP areas in our final analysis. The caste composition of the sample is similar in PVP and non-PVP areas (see Table 4, Appendix B). Women headed households are 14.46 per cent of the sample. SHG membership is high across both project and non-project areas, reflecting the long history of SHG movement in the state. 51.69 per cent of the sample households in projects areas are members of SHGs, while this proportion is 44.41 per cent in non-project areas. This research is an output of the Social Observatory Team of the World Bank and Pudhu Vaazhvu Project (PVP). Discussions with the PVP project team, led by the Additional Project Director RV Shajeevana, were critical to the design of this evaluation. Support from all Project Directors of PVP; and from Kevin Crockford, Samik Das and Makiko Watanabe from the World Bank task team is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank PVP for support during survey implementation and GfK Mode for implementing the survey. The authors...