Personalized Information Provision and the Take-Up of Emergency Government Benefits: Experimental Evidence from India

Amrit Amirapu, Irma Clots-Figueras, Bansi Malde, Anirban Mitra, Debayan Pakrashi and Zaki Wahhaj

Studies in Economics from School of Economics, University of Kent

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely a ected the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of households, resulting in widespread poverty and food insecurity. To mitigate these e ects, many governments have introduced additionalbenefits as part of their existing welfare schemes. However, there is often a gap between the introduction of these programs and access to the benefits. To shed light on the source of these gaps, we conduct a field experiment with just over 1,000 slum-dwelling households in Uttar Pradesh, India during the COVID-19 pandemic. The intervention randomly exposed individuals to personalised information about government benefits via cell phones. We find that the simple and low-cost provision of personalised information i) increased the accuracy and precision of participants' knowledge about their entitled benefits, ii) increased access to and utilization of benefits, and iii) improved wellbeing (as measured through consumption, food insecurity and mental health). We do not find significant differences in effects based on whether males or females are targeted. Our findings show that there are large gaps in knowledge of and access to government benefits (despite widespread publicity about the programs) which can be reduced via a simple and low-cost information intervention.

Keywords: COVID-19; Government Benefits; Emergency Aid; Information Intervention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 H53 I38 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hea
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