Perils of the Paperwork: The Impact of Information and Application Assistance on Social Benefit Take-Up in India

Sarika Gupta

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2026, vol. 18, issue 3, 342-71

Abstract: Governments worldwide administer social programs for vulnerable groups, yet many eligible citizens fail to benefit. This paper studies barriers to take-up of an unconditional cash transfer program for poor women in Delhi, India, where only one-third of eligible individuals were enrolled. In a randomized experiment with eligible women, providing program information alone increased applications only among the literate. Adding basic or intensive application assistance, however, raised average application rates by 41 percent and 70 percent, respectively, and expanded access among more vulnerable women. These results suggest that application ordeals can limit take-up by those with high need.

JEL-codes: D83 I32 I38 J16 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20240212 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E238656V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25771 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25772 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:aejpol:v:18:y:2026:i:3:p:342-71

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/pol.20240212

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy is currently edited by Matthew Shapiro

More articles in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().