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This randomized controlled trial examined the independent effect of village income inequality and individual income on individual health. Specifically, the study assessed how these two variables interacted with social capital to affect individual health. For the trial, 40 villages were selected for two experimental treatments. In the first treatment, 13 villages were picked at random to receive 782kg of edible rice as in-kind income. The 782kg of rice was split equally between all households in the village. For the second treatment, another 13 villages were picked at random. Each village in the second treatment received the same amount of rice as the villages in the first treatment (782kg), but all of the rice went to the poorest 20 percent of households in the village, with each household getting the same amount of rice. All households in the remaining 14 villages and all households in the top 80 percent of the village income distribution of the second treatment acted as controls, and received 6kg of high-yielding, improved rice seeds. The baseline survey was administered between February and May 2008, households received the rice between October 2008 and January 2009, and the end-line survey was administered between February and May 2009. Outcomes included anthropometric indicators of nutritional status, perceived health, and blood pressure.

Vermont's Welfare Restructuring Project (WRP) was one of the earliest statewide welfare reform programs initiated under waivers of federal welfare rules granted before the passage of the 1996 federal welfare reform law. This program, which operated from 1994 to 2001, was designed to increase work and reduce reliance on welfare. WRP required that welfare recipients work in a wage-paying job after they had received cash assistance for a specified number of months (30 months for single-parent families and 15 months for two-parent families). Recipients received help finding jobs and were offered minimum-wage community service jobs if they could not find unsubsidized employment. If a recipient did not comply with the work requirement, the state took control of their grant, used the money to pay their bills, and required them to attend frequent meetings at the welfare office. The WRP program also included a set of financial incentives that were intended to encourage and reward work. WRP served as a model for Vermont's current welfare program, which took effect in mid-2001. This study provides users with most of the data that were used for the final report. Parents who were applying for or receiving cash assistance in Vermont between July 1994 and December 1996 were assigned, at random, to one of three groups: (1) the WRP group, whose members received the financial work incentives and were subject to the work requirement; (2) the WRP Incentives Only group, whose members received the incentives but were not subject to the work requirement; or (3) the Aid to Needy Families with Children (ANFC) group, whose members remained subject to the pre-WRP welfare rules, which included neither the incentives nor the work requirement. Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) followed all three groups for six years, using computerized records and a survey. Data sources for this study were the Vermont and New Hampshire unemployment insurance earning records, Vermont ANFC (Aid to Needy Children) records, food stamp records, and other administrative records, as well as a survey questionnaire based on the quality of their jobs, wages, education, welfare use, education, job training, children's education, and childcare.