Intra-Village Expansion of Welfare Programs

Michael Christian Lehmann

No 29/2013, Economics and Politics Working Paper Series from Economics and Politics Research Group (EPRG), University of Brasília

Abstract: This paper studies, both theoretically and empirically, the intra-village expansion of the Oportunidades welfare program, to understand the relationship between the number of beneficiaries and the size of average treatment effects. At some point, the Mexican government relaxed the program's eligibility requirements. As a result, rural villages experienced a large increase in the share of residents receiving Oportunidades cash benefits. We compare, shortly before and after the inclusion of additional beneficiaries, the size of the average treatment effect (ATE) on households who were beneficiaries already prior to the program's intra-village expansion. Our findings suggests an increase in the ATE for nutrition and health, yet a decrease in the ATE for school enrollment and attendance. Disregarding possibly adverse affects on schooling, our analysis implies that geographic targeting would increase the program's global impact.

Keywords: Policy evaluation; general equilibrium effects; treatment effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 H43 I38 O12 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10-02
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gvn:eprgwp:292013

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23602873

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