The welfare effects of India’s rural employment guarantee

Klonner, Stefan; Oldiges, Christian

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.102848

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 44 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our distributional analysis shows that the reforms generated broad-based benefits, but also likely hurt a small but politically influential group of large landowners. This may help explain such landowners' documented opposition to NREGS (Anderson, Francois, and Kotwal (2015), Khera (2011)).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Corruption was widespread, and occurred both through over-invoicing the government to reimburse wages for work not actually done and paying workers less than their due, among other methods (Niehaus and Sukhtankar (2013a,b)). Finally, the payment process was slow and unreliable: payments were time-consuming to collect, and were often unpredictably delayed for over a month beyond the 14-day period prescribed by law (Khera (2011), Banerjee, Duflo, Imbert, Mathew, and Pande (2020)).…”

Section: The Nregsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A similar premise holds in our data: only 7% of income earned by our control group came from the NREGS. Yet 32% of households actively participated in the NREGS at some point in 2011, and the reform sharply increased their reservation wages. This underscores that the NREGS's impact depends not only on its "market share" but also on its credibility as an outside option.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence From India

Muralidharan

Niehaus

Sukhtankar

2023

ECTA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Public employment programs may affect poverty both directly through the income they provide and indirectly through general equilibrium effects. We estimate both effects, exploiting a reform that improved the implementation of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and whose rollout was randomized at a large (sub‐district) scale. The reform raised beneficiary households' earnings by 14%, and reduced poverty by 26%. Importantly, 86% of income gains came from non‐program earnings, driven by higher private‐sector (real) wages and employment. This pattern appears to reflect imperfectly competitive labor markets more than productivity gains: worker's reservation wages increased, land returns fell, and employment gains were higher in villages with more concentrated landholdings. Non‐agricultural enterprise counts and employment grew rapidly despite higher wages, consistent with a role for local demand in structural transformation. These results suggest that public employment programs can effectively reduce poverty in developing countries, and may also improve economic efficiency.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Nregsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence From India

Muralidharan

Niehaus

Sukhtankar

2023

ECTA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The most relevant policy to support the poor is a policy portfolio that stimulates (rural) economic development and structural transformation in line with SSP1, enabling high value-added jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors. Such a policy portfolio includes employment programmes 26 , education, digitalization and trade openness; and it supports labour mobility because distributional effects of long-term structural adjustments will be more severe if mobility is constrained.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural change likely increases inequality in India more than climate policy

Leimbach

Hübler

Mahlkow

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The decarbonization of India’s economy will affect economic actors differently. Here we study the distributional effects of climate policy in India, taking the specific role of structural economic change into account. We contrast distributional effects from climate policy with distributional effects from structural change and quantify how far carbon pricing supports structural change and economic development. We develop and apply a comprehensive model framework that combines long-term growth and medium-term trade dynamics related to structural change with detailed household income and expenditure data for India. Our results emphasize that distributional effects from structural change are stronger than from carbon pricing. Consequently, governments should not focus solely on the distributional effects of climate policy, but also consider the larger context of economic transformation processes when designing and implementing social policies.

show abstract

“…The MGNREG scheme is one of the world’s largest social protection programmes, generating 3.89 billion person-days of work for 75.5 million households in the financial year 2020–2021.This programme has garnered huge academic interest due to its size and multi-dimensional implications for rural India. Empirical studies have shown the positive welfare impact of the MGNREG scheme on income, nutritional intake, access to non-financial assets, adolescents’ school attendance, food security, savings and mental health (Deininger & Liu, 2019; Klonner & Oldiges, 2019; Muralidharan et al, 2017; Ravi & Engler, 2015). The evidence of the positive outcome of the MGNREG programme in terms of increased agricultural wages, generating environmental benefits, pacification of Maoist conflict violence, reduction in short-term migration, empowerment of rural women and financial inclusion is also available in earlier studies (Berg et al, 2018; Das, 2015; Dasgupta et al, 2017; Esteves et al, 2013; Pankaj & Tankha, 2010; Saibal, 2017; Singh, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Social Welfare Programmes Influence Households Trust in Local Administration and Their Political Participation? Evidence from the MGNREG Scheme in India

Goyal

Kumar

2022

Indian Journal of Human Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The prime purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of receiving employment benefits under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREG) scheme on the household’s trust in the local administration and their political participation. The present study is based on primary data collected through a structured schedule from selected districts of Haryana, India. In order to analyse the collected data, the ordered logistic regression method was used. The major findings of the study indicated that MGNREG beneficiaries expressed a lower level of trust and unfavourable attitude towards local administration. They were also found less interested in participating in the village-level meetings. Thus, it appeared that simply being a beneficiary of the MGNREG programme was not adequate to influence public trust in local administration. Finally, the policy measures were suggested to the policymakers to strengthen the relationship between MGNREG beneficiaries and the local administration.

show abstract

The welfare effects of India’s rural employment guarantee

Cited by 10 publications

References 44 publications

General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence From India

General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence From India

Structural change likely increases inequality in India more than climate policy

Does Social Welfare Programmes Influence Households Trust in Local Administration and Their Political Participation? Evidence from the MGNREG Scheme in India

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About