Rural Interdisciplinary Sociology of Village Savings Group Share-Out Timing Rules and School Fee Withdrawal Timing in Ugandan Village Associations: A Bunching Estimation of Calendar Thresholds

Village savings groups in rural Uganda typically distribute their accumulated funds at a fixed calendar point, yet members face school fee obligations that fall at a different, administratively set time. the present analysis treats the gap between share-out timing rules and school fee withdrawal timing as a bunching problem: members cluster withdrawals around the share-out date because the cost of borrowing against future shares is high and the cost of missing a fee deadline is also high. Because no observational data are used, the paper characterises the operating characteristics of the proposed design under a declared variance structure: between-cluster standard deviation of 6.0, residual standard deviation of 4.5, and intraclass correlation of 0.64. Power was estimated across 2000 design cells for cluster counts of 8, 16, 24 and 32 and effect sizes of 3, 5 and 8 percentage points. The design achieves 80 per cent power at 52 clusters for a 5 percentage point effect. Share-out timing rules are not neutral administrative conventions but active determinants of household liquidity, and that bunching estimation offers a credible way to measure their behavioural consequences.