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.
Authors
- Collection(s)
- Policy Research Working Papers
- DOI
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-9835
- Googlescholar linkpresent
- yes
- Identifier externaldocumentum
- 090224b088b1bb84_2_0
- Identifier internaldocumentum
- 33579104
- Published in
- United States of America
- Region country
- India
- RelationisPartofseries
- Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9835
- Report
- WPS9835
- Rights
- CC BY 3.0 IGO
- Rights Holder
- World Bank
- Rights URI
- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo
- UNIT
- Development Policy Team, Development Economics
- URI
- http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36486
- citation
- “Bahal, Girish. 2021. A Tale of Two Programs : Assessing Treatment and Control in NREGA Studies . Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9835. World Bank, Washington, DC. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/36486 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
- date disclosure
- 2021-11-03
- region administrative
- South Asia
