Welfare policy and labour market outcomes among persons with disabilities (PwDs) in India: Evidence from the NSS 76th Round

Harsh Raj, Himangshu Kumar and Manikantha Nataraj

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: India is the host of one of the largest population of persons with disabilities (PwDs) in the world. However, a large section of this population has been unable to access opportunities for economic and social progress, despite the enactment of the RPWD Act, 2016, the country’s most ambitious disability rights legislation to date. This study attempts to analyse the impact of the Indian government’s two primary welfare policies – the disability certificate and a cash transfer (the pension) - on employment outcomes for PwDs. Logistic regression results show that having a certificate with percentage of disability less than 60%, raises the probability of employment by 17%. As the extent of disability rises above 60%, the probability of being employed declines. However, the largest effect size is seen for a narrow set of registered salaried jobs. The effect of the pension is analyzed through a propensity score matching technique for each state, keeping out of pocket (OOP) disability expenses as the outcome, and pension as the treatment. The results reveal negative and significant treatment effects (ATT) of the pension on OOP disability expenses. Interpreting OOP expenses as an indicator of the ‘conversion handicap’ faced by PwDs (Sen, 2004), we argue that cash transfers can also indirectly reduce the barriers to employment.

Keywords: disability; cash transfer; welfare; pension; employment; affirmative action; reservation; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I38 J0 J7 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/112347/1/MPRA_paper_112347.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:112347

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().