Can SMS Technology Improve Low Take-up of Social Benefits?

Mariana Blanco and Juan Vargas

No 11036, Documentos de Trabajo from Universidad del Rosario

Abstract: Low take up of stigma-free social benefits is often blamed on information asymmetries or administrative barriers. There is limited evidence on which of these potential channels is more salient in which contexts. We designed and implemented a randomized controlled trial to assess the extent to which informational barriers are responsible for the prevalent low take-up of government benefits among Colombian conflict-driven internal refugees. We provide timely information on benefits eligibility responsible for the prevalent low take-up of government benefits among Colombian ity via SMS to a random half of the displaced household that migrated to Bogota over a 6-month period. We show that improving information increases benefi ts' take up. However, the e ffect is small and only true for certain type of bene fits. Hence, consistent with previous experimental literature, the availability of timely information explains only part of the low-take up rates and the role of administrative barriers and bureaucratic processes should be tackled to increase the well-being of internal refugees in Colombia.

Keywords: Information asymmetries; take-up rate; SMS; RCT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2013-12-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta and nep-exp
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http://repository.urosario.edu.co/bitstream/handle/10336/10965/11036.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Can SMS Technology Improve Low Take-up of Social Benefits? (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:col:000092:011036

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