Jeevika Livelihoods Project, Phase 1 - One Round "Retrospective" Evaluation. Household Survey Data 2011

Socio-Economic Effects of a Self-Help Group Intervention: Evidence from Bihar, India

Poverty reduction via formation of community based organizations is a popular approach in regions of high socio-economic marginalization, especially in South Asia. The shortage of evidence on the impacts of such an approach is an outcome of the complexity of these projects, which almost always have a multi-sectoral design to achieve a comprehensive basket of aims. In the current research, we consider results from a rural livelihoods program in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. Adopting a model prevalent in several Indian states, the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project, known locally as JEEViKA, relies on mobilizing women from impoverished, socially marginalized households into Self Help Groups. Simultaneously, activities such as micro-finance and technical assistance for agricultural livelihoods are taken up by the project and routed to the beneficiaries via these institutions; these institutions also serve as a platform for women to come together and discuss a multitude of the socio-economic problems that they face. We use a retrospective survey instrument, coupled with PSM techniques to find that JEEViKA, has engendered some significant results in restructuring the debt portfolio of these households; additionally, JEEViKA has been instrumental in providing women with higher levels of empowerment, as measured by various dimensions.

In the current research, we consider a multi-sectoral approach which closely resembles the APDPIP design. We take a close look at the impacts of a rural poverty reduction program in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. This program JEEViKA, focusses on building Self Help Groups (SHGs) of marginalized women; these groups are then federated into higher order institutions of such women at the village and local level. Cheap credit for a variety of purposes, technical assistance for various livelihood activities and encouraging awareness about various public services are the key agendas of this program. However, due to the very nature of JEEViKA’s target population, and given Bihar’s vicious income and gender inequality, the potential for impacts on women’s empowerment exists. A retrospective survey instrument, coupled with ‘Propensity Score Matching’ methods are used to estimate the impacts.

The results from the survey point out that JEEViKA has played an instrumental role in restructuring the debt portfolio of beneficiary households; households that have SHG members have a significantly lower high cost debt burden, are able to access smaller loans repeatedly and borrow more often for productive purposes, when compared to households without SHG members. Since JEEViKA works by mobilizing marginalized women into institutional platforms, such women demonstrate higher levels of empowerment, when empowerment is measured by mobility, decision making and collective action. Finally, we see some effects on the asset positions, food security and sanitation preferences of beneficiary households. It is worth pointing out here that the extent and significance of the results on debt portfolio and empowerment are robust to various matching modules and various specifications of the matched sample. The results on the other dimensions are subject to specifications or matching modules.

This brings out to the point about the timeline of these interventions and the materialization of impacts. In the context of such iterative, multi-sectoral poverty reduction approach, a well_x0002_designed research question must be able to identify the goals that a project should have achieved, given the time-line of that evaluation; the extent of such achievements are only a part of the evaluation agenda. The short review provided above provides some clues that a regular evaluation horizon of 2/3 years may be insufficient time to observe higher order effects, especially since actual benefits happen only after poor are mobilized into institutions and institutions are federated into higher-order institutions; indeed, the village-level institution, the Village Organization, which is made of 15 SHGs on an average, becomes functional 8-10 months after JEEViKA enters a village for the first time. The retrospective nature of the survey instrument also rules out any meaningful comparison of consumption or income levels between treatment and control areas.