Poverty and Employability Effects of Workfare Programs in Argentina

Lucas Ronconi, Juan Sanguinetti, Sandra Fachelli, Virginia Casazza and Ignacio Franceschelli

Working Papers PMMA from PEP-PMMA

Abstract: In 1993 Argentina began implementing workfare programs, and workfare has become a central public policy starting 2002 when the government increased the number of beneficiaries from 100,000 to 2 million people in a country of 38 million. We explore targeting, poverty and employability effects of workfare before 2002 based on the permanent household survey (EPH). We find that the program was pro-poor although more than one third of participants did not satisfy the eligibility criteria. Our estimates suggest that the income of participants increased during treatment - particularly for women - indicating beneficial short run poverty effects. However, the long run effects of the program are not obvious due to selection on treatment completion. We present evidence suggesting that -for a large fraction of participants- the program generated dependency and did not increase their human capital.

Keywords: Workfare; evaluation; Argentina (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 J48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lam
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lvl:pmmacr:2006-14

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