Technology, Identification, and Access to Social Programs: Experimental Evidence from Panama

Angela Reyes, Benjamin Roseth and Diego A. Vera-Cossio
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Diego A. Vera Cossio

No 11535, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: Access to identification cards (IDs) is often required to claim government benefits. However, it is unclear which policies to increase ID ownership are more effective. We experimentally analyze the effect of two policy interventions to induce the timely renewal of identification cards on access to a government social program in Panama. Sending reminders about expiration dates increased the probability of on-time renewals and of accessing benefits from a social program by 12 and 4.3 percentage points, respectively, relative to a control group. In contrast, allowing individuals to renew their ID online only increased renewals and access to benefits by 8 and 2.9 percentage points, respectively. This result was driven by lower-income individuals. The results suggest that policies to increase ownership of valid identity documentation can reduce inclusion errors in government programs and that simply granting access to digital tools may not be enough to unlock important effects.

Keywords: Nudges; Social protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 H53 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-mfd
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english ... ence-from-Panama.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

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:idb:brikps:11535

DOI: 10.18235/0003485

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().