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3. The pursuit of simplicity: Can simplifying eligibility criteria improve social pension targeting?

Author

Asri, Viola; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8531-285X, Michaelowa, Katharina; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0317-209X, Panda, Sitakanta; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3622-4650, Paul, Sourabh B; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6410-1818, Asri, Viola; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8531-285X, Michaelowa, Katharina; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0317-209X, Panda, Sitakanta; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3622-4650, and Paul, Sourabh B; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6410-1818

Abstract

Governments in developing countries struggle to reach intended beneficiaries when targeting social transfers towards vulnerable populations. Rates of eligible individuals not receiving social transfers and ineligible individuals receiving them tend to be high, constraining the effectiveness of such anti-poverty programs. While interventions to incentivize or monitor local agents in charge of selecting beneficiaries are typically expensive, an important complementary and cost-effective approach could be to reform eligibility criteria to facilitate the selection of beneficiaries. Whether reforms should focus on reducing the number of rules, or selecting criteria which are easy to verify, or do both remains an unanswered question. We address this knowledge gap based on India’s social pension scheme for elderly poor. We find that making eligibility criteria easier to verify has the potential to achieve a substantial improvement in the targeting performance through a reduction in the exclusion error. Those who meet the relevant criteria have a much higher chance of actually becoming beneficiaries. Since eligibility criteria can be changed at low cost, this suggests a viable route for reform in many developing countries. However, a major caveat remains that criteria must sufficiently well reflect actual poverty if the more accurate selection of beneficiaries according to formal criteria shall also translate into actual poverty reduction.

Published
2022

6. Do more transparent eligibility rules improve public program targeting? : Evidence from India’s old-age social pension reform

Author

Asri, Viola, Michaelowa, Katharina, Panda, Sitakanta, and Paul, Sourabh B.

Subjects
ddc:330, Targeting, transparency, old-age pensions, poverty, India
Abstract

Public program targeting is particularly challenging in developing countries. Transparency in eligibility rules for the implementation of social programs could be an effective measure to reduce mistargeting. While prior studies have examined the relevance of transparent delivery mechanisms, we focus on the clarity and verifiability of eligibility criteria. India's social pension reforms in the late 2000s provide the opportunity to examine the effect of a change in these criteria within and across states. Using two rounds of the India Human Development Survey along with extensive administrative information collected for the different states, we test whether increasing the transparency of eligibility criteria reduces the mistargeting of social pensions. We thereby allow for a tolerance band, and account for changes in social pension coverage. Our results confirm the expected relationship between the transparency of eligibility criteria and targeting performance and are robust to different specifications of the transparency measure and various robustness checks. Since eligibility criteria can be changed at low cost, this suggests a viable route for reform in many developing countries. published

Published
2020

10. Job Creation and Job Destruction in Indian Manufacturing

Author

Goswami, Diti and Paul, Sourabh B.

Abstract

The reallocation of jobs is crucial in determining the movement of workers, the unemployment rate, the wage dynamics, the life cycle of firms and industries and the aggregate productivity growth. This article analyses job reallocation in terms of simultaneous establishment-level job creation and job destruction in Indian organised manufacturing. The study employs longitudinal data from the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) from 2004–2005 to 2014–2015 and the methodology stated in Davis and Haltiwanger (1992)to analyse job reallocation. During the expansionary periods, job creation and job destruction were rising, while during the contractionary period from 2008 to 2009 onwards, job creation declined, whereas job destruction was constant. The reallocations of jobs varied substantially across the narrow heterogeneous sectors defined by observable plant characteristics. The rate of these simultaneous job creation and destruction processes is high for many establishments and accounts for a significant portion of worker reallocation. However, the consistency of these newly created and destroyed jobs is low. Theories like ‘passive learning’ and ‘between-sector employment shifts’ partially explain this phenomenon of high job reallocation. The study provides useful policy insights to improve manufacturing employment during the process of frequent job creation and destruction, especially in a developing economy.JEL Codes:J01, J23, J21, J40, F63

Published
2024
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