eprintid: 16875
rev_number: 51
eprint_status: archive
userid: 2744
dir: disk0/00/01/68/75
datestamp: 2014-05-19 13:37:08
lastmod: 2016-01-14 10:46:29
status_changed: 2014-05-19 13:37:08
type: workingPaper
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Klonner, Stefan
creators_name: Oldiges , Christian 
title: Safety Net for India's Poor or Waste of Public Funds? Poverty and Welfare in the Wake of the World's Largest Job Guarantee Program 
subjects: ddc-330
divisions: i-181000
keywords: job guarantee, public employment programs, welfare programs, poverty,consumption smoothing, India
abstract: This paper examines the effects of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, currently the world's largest public employment program, on household consumption and poverty rates in rural India. Combining regionally coded data from consumption surveys with information on the district-wise rollout of the program, we employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate program effects during the years 2007 and 2008. We find large, season-specific effects among a traditionally deprived sub-group of the rural population, whose incomes are particularly dependent on agricultural wage labor. We find that for this group of households,which accounts for thirty percent of India's rural population, employment opportunities under the scheme have cut poverty during the agricultural lean season by as much as one half while we find no effect during the agricultural peak season. In a
cost-benefit analysis we find that consumption increases among this group of households are of the same order of magnitude as the wage outlays of the program. We document that consumption among this group of households had previously exhibited severe systematic seasonal fluctuations and conclude that the employment program
has had a lasting effect on consumption smoothing across agricultural seasons.
date: 2014-05
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00016875
schriftenreihe_cluster_id: sr-3
schriftenreihe_order: 0564
ppn_swb: 1657548279
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-168753
language: eng
bibsort: KLONNERSTESAFETYNETF201405
full_text_status: public
series: Discussion Paper Series / University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics
volume: 0564
pages: 50
citation:   Klonner, Stefan ; Oldiges , Christian   (2014) Safety Net for India's Poor or Waste of Public Funds? Poverty and Welfare in the Wake of the World's Largest Job Guarantee Program.  [Working paper]     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/16875/1/Klonner_Oldiges_2014_dp564.pdf