Heterogeneous welfare impacts of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: Evidence from Andhra Pradesh, India

Klaus Deininger and Yanyan Liu ()

World Development, 2019, vol. 117, issue C, 98-111

Abstract: We use a three-round, 4013-household panel from Andhra Pradesh, together with administrative data and village and population census data, to explore the welfare effects of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) on direct beneficiaries. NREGS participants in districts that had been exposed to the program for one year only significantly increased protein and energy intake while in districts with two-year exposure, participants were able to accumulate more nonfinancial assets. The benefits are most pronounced for scheduled casts/scheduled tribes and for the poor, in particular female headed households and households with disabilities. We also find that increased income from casual labor is the primary channel through which the effects are realized. We find no evidence that NREGS participation has resulted in higher private investment in land improvement.

Keywords: India; Employment guarantee; NREGS; Caste; Public works (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J48 O15 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X18304480
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:wdevel:v:117:y:2019:i:c:p:98-111

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.12.014

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().