Anti-poverty interventions often face a trade-off between immediate reduction in poverty, measured by consumption, and building assets for longer-term gains. An “Ultra-poor Graduation” model, found effective on both dimensions, generally leans towards asset building. By using data from a large-scale RCT in Bangladesh, we find significant variation in impact on assets where the top quintile of gainers had an impact of 3.44 on their log of assets compared to the impact of 1.92 observed by the bottom quintile. We also find heterogeneity in household expenditure although the estimates are less robust across different estimation methods. Importantly, we find contrasts in characteristics of beneficiaries who made the most in assets vs. consumption. The results identify beneficiary characteristics that can be used in targeting households either to maximize impact on the desired dimension and/or to customize interventions for balancing the asset and consumption trade-off.

Studies assessing the impact of information on uptake of preventive health products among the poor have shown mixed results, and little is known about what type of messages are most effective. Drawing on insights from the literature on marketing and consumer behavior, we argue that messages which position a product as aspirational or establish the credibility of its health benefits can increase consumer demand for the product. We test the individual and joint impacts of such messages through a field experiment eliciting willingness to pay for fortified rice in Chandpur District, Bangladesh. We find that the combination of these approaches increases the proportion of participants willing to pay a premium at least equal to the cost of fortification by 18 percentage points. In sharp contrast to the existing literature on welfare stigma, we also show that awareness of free distribution of fortified rice through government programs does not negatively affect consumer demand, but rather appears to lend credibility to health claims about the product.