Labor Market Impacts of a Large-Scale Public Works Program: Evidence from the Indian Employment Guarantee Scheme

Laura Zimmermann

No 6858, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Recent years have seen an increasing interest in using public-works programs as anti-poverty measures in developing countries. This paper analyzes the rural labor market impacts of the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, one of the most ambitious programs of its kind, by using a regression discontinuity design. I find that private-sector wages increase substantially for women, but not for men, and that these effects are concentrated during the main agricultural season. In contrast, there is little evidence for negative private employment effects.

Keywords: public works program; National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme; NREGA; NREGS; India; regression discontinuity design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H53 I38 J22 J23 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6858.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp6858

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().