Market Responses to Anti-hunger Policies: Effects on Wages, Prices and Employment

Ravallion, Martin

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198286363.003.0006

Cited by 24 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…The study concludes that a sharp reduction in the share of poor participation was compensated by higher agricultural wage. A similar conclusion to support for the substantial multiplier effect is drawn by Ravallion (1990) who assumes the urban/rural dualistic economy with mobility between a rural sector where wage is flexible and an urban sector where wage is fixed. However, drawing upon 1987-89 data, Ravallion et.…”

Section: Indirect Effects Of the Egssupporting

confidence: 65%

Targeting versus universalism: An evaluation of indirect effects of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

Imai

2007

Journal of Policy Modeling

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Although a workfare scheme is potentially a cost-effective poverty alleviation scheme as it attracts only the poor who have an incentive to do unskilled manual works, an investigation of the ICRISAT data in India clarifies that the Employment Guarantee Scheme was mistargeted, i.e., a substantial share of the non-poor also participated. The comparison of the EGS and universalism through the villagelevel SAM (Social Accounting Matrix) model reveals that the former is neither efficient nor equitable than the latter unless the state government carefully designs the scheme so that the EGS assets, such as irrigation facilities, are made accessible to the poor without undermining their positive effects on agricultural productivity.

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Section: Indirect Effects Of the Egssupporting

confidence: 65%

Targeting versus universalism: An evaluation of indirect effects of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

Imai

2007

Journal of Policy Modeling

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“…36 Following Ravallion's [1991a] classification, one difficulty is that only a component of direct transfer benefits (that is, net EGS earnings) is considered. While these benefits are not unimportant, other benefits matter too.…”

Section: Targeting Of Egsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How dependent are the rural poor on the employment guarantee scheme in India?

Gaiha

1996

Journal of Development Studies

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“…Economists have studied the effects of such program on wages and private sector hiring. Ravallion (1987) and Basu et al (2009) show that government hiring may crowd out private sector work and lead to a rise in equilibrium private sector wages. Recently various papers have shown that there has been an increase in rural wages in India due to workfare (Imbert and Papp, 2015;Berg et al, 2012;Azam, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India

Shah

Steinberg

2015

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I EIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We examine the effect of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), one of the largest workfare programs in the world, on human capital investment. Since NREGS increases labor demand, it could increase the opportunity cost of schooling, lowering human capital investment even as incomes increase. We exploit the staged rollout of the program across districts for causal identification. Using a household survey of test scores and schooling outcomes for approximately 2.5 million rural children in India, we show that each year of exposure to NREGS decreases school enrollment by 2 percentage points and math scores by 2% of a standard deviation amongst children aged 13-16. In addition, while the impacts of NREGS on human capital are similar for boys and girls, adolescent boys are primarily substituting into market work when they leave school while adolescent girls are substituting into unpaid domestic work. We find mixed results for younger children. We conclude that anti-poverty programs which raise wages could have the unintended effect of lowering human capital investment.JEL Classification: O12, I2, I38, J1

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Market Responses to Anti-hunger Policies: Effects on Wages, Prices and Employment

Abstract: * I have had useful discussions on some of these issues with Jim Boyce S. Bramhe, V.M. Dandekar, N.S. Jodha, Kiran Moghe, Amartya Sen, R.M. Sundrum, Dominique van de Walle, and Tom Walker. I am particularly grateful to Jean Dreze for his detailed comments on the paper.

Cited by 24 publications

References 43 publications

Targeting versus universalism: An evaluation of indirect effects of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

Targeting versus universalism: An evaluation of indirect effects of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

How dependent are the rural poor on the employment guarantee scheme in India?

Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India

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