Do Self-Help Groups empower women and reduce poverty?

The Odisha Rural Livelihoods Project is a participatory project that provides credit to and supports the livelihoods of groups of women who belong to project-facilitated SHGs. The project’s objective is to increase the productive potential, and therefore the socioeconomic status, of the poor. The evaluation—assesses the effect of the project on household welfare and local collective action using a regression discontinuity design. It is also one of three rigorous evaluations that examine the same multidimensional project design in different states and therefore implementation contexts.Evaluating the same design in different implementation contexts should address the question of external validity to some extent .