Anti-Poverty Programs Can Reduce Violence: India's Rural Employment Guarantee and Maoist Conflict

Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War

“…These bounties apparently sought to induce poor individuals to fight by increasing the monetary payoff to enlisting. The prevalence of such monetary rewards targeted toward the poor is consistent with research that argues higher levels of personal wealth make individuals less likely to participate in rebellion (Berman et al 2011;Collier and Hoeffler 2004;Dasgupta, Gawande, and Kapur 2017;Dube and Vargas 2013;Fearon and Laitin 2003;Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti 2004;Olson 1965). These authors argue that individuals participate in conflicts after weighing the material benefits they can obtain from fighting against the benefits from staying out of the conflict.…”

“…2 The saying captures the claim that poorer white southern men, most of whom did not own slaves, were more likely to fight in the Confederate Army than their wealthier slaveowning peers. Such a pattern would be consistent with research in political science arguing that individuals participate in conflict in part because they gain greater material benefits from fighting than from not fighting, at least when personal wealth is not closely tied to the outcome of the conflict (Berman et al 2011;Collier and Hoeffler 2004;Dasgupta, Gawande, and Kapur 2017;Dube and Vargas 2013;Fearon and Laitin 2003;Humphreys and Weinstein 2008;Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti 2004;Olson 1965). By this logic, wealthier southern men should be less likely to participate in the conflict, both because their wealth raises the opportunity costs to fighting and because of the potential diminishing marginal utility of money.…”

Can public works programs reduce youth crime? Evidence from Papua New Guinea’s Urban Youth Employment Project

“…Other studies have examined the effect of NREGS on the prevalence on Maoist violence and found mixed results. Dasgupta et al (2014) find that NREGS substantially reduced the prevalence of armed conflict as proxied by local news reports. This is consistent with Fetzer (2014), who found that NREGS mediated the effect of adverse rainfall shocks on conflict.…”

Financial inclusion through a public works programme: Does left‐wing extremism make a difference?

“…Akin to Dasgupta et al. (), all regressions control for the score of the district on the backwardness index (BI), interacted with year dummy variables, so as to minimize possible concerns regarding non‐parallel time trends across different phases, emanating from the assignment of less developed districts as measured on the backwardness index to earlier phases of the programme.…”