used for a welfare measure and the construction of a panel over time (including the extent of attrition) is unclear. Investing in a scientifically sound system of M&E should be at the top of the agenda in case CARP were to be extended. Other data sources, notably the censuses of population and housing, and of agriculture and FIES, are nationally representative and have sufficiently large samples but none of them contains household-level panel observation. Consequently, data need to be analyzed either cross-section wise, with all the potential endogeneity problems inhibiting rigorous causal inferences, or with the construction of panel observations of higher-levels of aggregation, such as the barangay or the province level. The statistical analyses based on household-level cross-section data suggest that the average per capita consumption among households gaining access to land through land tenure improvement) interventions under CARP, without additional support services, are about 15% higher than that of landless, non-beneficiary households. Benefiting from ARC interventions, in addition to the LTI intervention, appears to be associated with additional 8% higher per capita consumption (thus 23% increase from both LTI and ARC interventions). As discussed earlier, however, such cross-section statistical correlations might not necessarily be interpreted as causal impact, due to unobserved heterogeneity and non-random program placement. In fact, it appears that the results of the analyses containing attempts to control for potential endogeneity biases, such as propensity score matching (e.g., APPC 2007) and DD estimates based on panel data, tend to find quantitatively smaller magnitudes of CARP impact. This observation suggests that cross-section results might be biased. At the end, however, despite all the caveats in the available data, the existing evidence collectively suggests that CARP implementation had some significantly positive welfare impacts on its beneficiaries. It is difficult to fix the quantitative magnitude of its impact, however. Perhaps, a safe conclusion to draw is that, on the one hand, the actual impact of CARP on the rural poor might not have been as dramatic as its proponents would have liked to see, but that, on the other hand, CARP has not been as ineffective as some of its most fierce critics have claimed either. The review also suggests that land tenure improvement interventions should remain the core operation of CARP.
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