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  • FT50 A*

    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.

  • FT50 A*

    We use a large-scale randomized experiment to study the impact of augmenting staffing in the world?s largest public early-childhood program: India?s Integrated Child Development Services. Adding a worker doubled net preschool instructional time and led to increases of 0.28σ and 0.46σ in math and language test scores after 18 months for children who remained enrolled in the program and 0.13σ and 0.10σ for all children enrolled at baseline. Rates of stunting and severe malnutrition were also lower in the treatment group for children who remained enrolled. A cost-benefit analysis suggests that the benefits of augmenting staffing significantly exceed its costs. These effects are likely to replicate even at larger scales of program implementation.

Last update from database: 9/16/24, 10:02 PM (AEST)