Government transfers and political support

Marco Manacorda (m.manacorda@qmul.ac.uk), Edward Miguel and Andrea Vigorito

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty program – the Uruguayan PANES – on political support for the government that implemented it. The program mainly consisted of a monthly cash transfer for a period of roughly two and half years. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a pre-treatment score, we find that beneficiary households are 21 to 28 percentage points more likely to favor the current government (relative to the previous government). Impacts on political support are larger among poorer households and for those near the center of the political spectrum, consistent with the probabilistic voting model in political economy. Effects persist after the cash transfer program ends. We estimate that the annual cost of increasing government political support by 1 percentage point is roughly 0.9% of annual government social expenditures.

Keywords: Conditional cash transfers; redistributive politics; voting; regression discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2009-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28519/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Government Transfers and Political Support (2011)
Working Paper: Government Transfers and Political Support (2009)
Working Paper: Government Transfers and Political Support (2009)
Working Paper: Government Transfers and Political Support (2009)
Working Paper: Government Transfers and Political Support (2009)
Working Paper: Government Transfers and Political Support (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:28519

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