Does Workfare Work Well? : The Case of the Employment Generation Program for the Poorest in Bangladesh
Evidence on the effectiveness of workfare as an anti-poverty program in developing countries is weak compared with the relatively well-established role of public works during economic crisis as a social safety net. This paper contributes to evidenc...
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/693021522689848382/Does-workfare-work-well-the-case-of-the-employment-generation-program-for-the-poorest-in-Bangladesh http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29609 |
| Summary: | Evidence on the effectiveness of
workfare as an anti-poverty program in developing countries
is weak compared with the relatively well-established role
of public works during economic crisis as a social safety
net. This paper contributes to evidence building by
examining the impact of a large-scale workfare program in
Bangladesh, the Employment Generation Program for the
Poorest. Taking advantage of the program's
distinguishable feature of direct wage transfer to a
person's bank account, the paper uses accessibility to
local banks as an instrumental variable to identify the
program's impacts on rural social assistance
beneficiaries. Based on locality-by-time fixed effects
models over two rounds of locality panel data, the analysis
finds that the Employment Generation Program for the Poorest
has contributed to increasing overall household consumption
and reducing outstanding loans. In particular, expenditures
on quality food and health care have significantly
increased, which likely helps individuals continue to engage
in income-generating activities in the labor market.
However, the implementation costs and poor quality of public
assets built through work projects could potentially
undermine the program's efficiency. Moreover, further
evidence is required on the impacts of work experience
through workfare on subsequent labor market outcomes and the
value of public assets, to assess the program's
effectiveness compared with administratively simpler
alternative instruments such as unconditional cash transfers. |
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