Government Support in Times of Crisis: Transfers and the Road to Socialism

Felipe Gonzalez and Mounu Prem
Additional contact information
Felipe Gonzalez: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

No vnz6d_v1, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Despite the adverse effects of economic crises, incumbents often retain significant electoral support. We attribute this resilience to the intensified political returns of transfers during crises. Our context is the largest infant nutrition program in the world, implemented by Salvador Allende and his left-wing coalition in Chile (1970-1973) as part of a large increase in spending that contributed to hyperinflation, scarcity of basic goods, and plummeting real wages. Using administrative data and surveys, we find that the delivery of three cups of milk per day to all preschoolers in the country lowered infant mortality and helped the left-wing government to remain electorally popular. We support the causal interpretation of results by exploiting a family planning program from the late 1960s, information campaigns targeting women, and voting in gender-segregated booths. Furthermore, novel measures of the local severity of the economic crisis reveal that transfers yielded greater political returns in areas hardest hit by economic hardship. Why did the crisis fail to translate into support for the opposition coalition? Survey evidence suggests that transfers swayed voters who perceived the crisis as unrelated to government policies. Overall, our findings demonstrate how direct transfers and heterogeneous perceptions of economic crises can sustain the electoral popularity of governments.

Date: 2025-01-29
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/679b9ff3caee1f07d388b8be/

Related works:
Working Paper: Government Support in Times of Crisis: Transfers and the Road to Socialism (2025)
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:osf:osfxxx:vnz6d_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/vnz6d_v1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().