This note reports on the long run (seven-year) impact of Bandhan’s “Targetting the Hard
Core Poor program”, a multifaceted anti-poverty program which includes an asset transfer and
support for 18 months, in West Bengal, India. Evaluations in seven different sites, including
West Bengal (reported in Banerjee et al (2015) and Bandiera et al (2016)) find large effect of
the programs, 3 years after it was launched (and 18 months after services ended). In the longer
run, we find large, persistent, and often growing impacts: Seven years after the asset were first
distributed, the monthly consumption of those assigned to treatment is 16 dollars– or 25%–
higher than the consumption of non those assigned to control (the short term effect was 6.6
dollars – or 12%). Positive effects are found across all categories of outcomes (consumption,
assets, income, food security, financial stability, time spent working, and physical and mental
health), including some outcomes where we did not originally find an effect in the short or
medium run. This suggests that the promise of the program to have unlocked a “poverty trap”
seem realized, at least in this context.