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Anti-poverty programs in developing countries are often difficult to implement as intended; one common challenge is governments' limited capacity to deliver payments securely to targeted beneficiaries. We evaluate the impact of biometrically-authenticated payments infrastructure on public employment and pension programs in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, using a large-scale experiment that randomized the rollout of the new system over 158 sub-districts and 19 million people. We find that, while far from perfectly implemented, the new system delivered a faster, more predictable, and less corrupt payments process without adversely affecting program access. Distributions of key outcomes in treated areas first-order stochastically dominated those in control areas, and beneficiaries overwhelmingly favored the new payments system. The investment was cost-effective, as time savings to beneficiaries alone were equal to the cost of the intervention (in the case of the employment scheme). Overall the results suggest that investing in secure authentication and payments infrastructure can significantly add to "state capacity" to effectively implement social programs in developing countries.

Zonder onderwerpscode: economie

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Should developing countries give everyone enough money to live on? Interest in this idea has grown enormously in recent years, reflecting both positive results from a number of existing cash transfer programs and also dissatisfaction with the perceived limitations of piecemeal, targeted approaches to reducing extreme poverty. We discuss what we know (and what we do not) about three questions: what recipients would likely do with the incremental income, whether this would unlock further economic growth, and the potential consequences of giving the money to everyone (as opposed to targeting it).

Zonder onderwerpscode: economie

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Improving "last mile" public-service delivery is a recurring challenge in developing countries. Could the rapid adoption of mobile phones provide a simple, cost-effective means to do so? We evaluate the impact of a phone-based monitoring system on improving the delivery of a program that transferred nearly a billion dollars to farmers in the Indian state of Telangana, using an at-scale experiment randomized across 5.7 million farmers. A randomly selected sample of officials were told that a representative sample of beneficiaries in their jurisdiction would be called to measure the quality of program implementation. This simple announcement led to a 1.5% increase in the number of farmers receiving their benefits, with a 3.3% increase among farmers in the bottom quartile of landholdings. The program was highly cost-effective, with a cost of 3.6 cents for each additional dollar delivered.

Zonder onderwerpscode: economie

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Anti-poverty programs in developing countries are often difficult to implement; in particular, many governments lack the capacity to deliver payments securely to targeted beneficiaries. We evaluate the impact of biometrically-authenticated payments infrastructure ("Smartcards") on beneficiaries of employment (NREGS) and pension (SSP) programs in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, using a large-scale experiment that randomized the rollout of Smartcards over 158 sub- districts and 19 million people. We find that, while incompletely implemented, the new system delivered a faster, more predictable, and less corrupt NREGS payments process without adversely affecting program access. For each of these outcomes, treatment group distributions first-order stochastically dominated those of the control group. The investment was cost-effective, as time savings to NREGS beneficiaries alone were equal to the cost of the intervention, and there was also a significant reduction in the "leakage" of funds between the government and beneficiaries in both NREGS and SSP programs. Beneficiaries overwhelmingly preferred the new system for both programs. Overall, our results suggest that investing in secure payments infrastructure can significantly enhance "state capacity" to implement welfare programs in developing countries.