A Tale of Two Programs: Assessing Treatment and Control in NREGA Studies

Girish Bahal

No 9835, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper revisits impact evaluation studies on the largest public workfare in the world, NREGA. In an environment where randomization is not feasible, I show why an impact evaluation exercise on NREGA should acknowledge the existence of an older program, SGRY. Using novel district-level expenditure data on SGRY, this article shows how ignoring the older program is likely to underestimate the general equilibrium impact of the employment policy on various relevant socio-economic outcomes. In most cases, ignoring SGRY underestimates NREGA’s impact by 30–40 percent.

Keywords: Labor Policies; Agricultural Growth and Rural Development; Rural Settlements; Labor Standards; Child Labor Law; Rural Labor Markets; Labor Markets; Child Labor; Food Security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-11-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Journal Article: A Tale of Two Programs: Assessing Treatment and Control in NREGA Studies (2022)
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