The paper re-visits the site of a large, World Bank-financed,
rural development program in China, 10 years after it began and four years
after disbursements ended. The program emphasized community
participation in multi-sectoral interventions (including farming, animal
husbandry, infrastructure and social services). Data were collected on
2,000 households in project and non-project areas, spanning 10 years. A
double-difference estimator of the program’s impact (on top of preexisting
governmental programs) reveals sizeable short-term income gains
that were mostly saved. Only modest gains to mean consumption emerged
in the longer-term — in rough accord with the gain to permanent income.
Certain types of households gained more than others. The educated poor
were under-covered by the community-based selection process — greatly
reducing overall impact. The main results are robust to corrections for
various sources of selection bias, including village targeting and
interference due to spillover effects generated by the response of local
governments to the external aid