Our interpretation of these findings is that the VF has indeed had a moderate impact on household spending, and also (but to a lesser extent) on household income. We thus find a more modest effect than that observed by Kaboski and Townsend (unpublished), who find that household spending in 2003 increased by more than the amounts borrowed from the VF. Although their methodological approach is similar, their sample is relatively small, and limited to four provinces in central and northeastern Thailand, which may explain the difference in the findings.