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Can Social Safety Nets Protect Public Health? The Effect of India's Workfare and Foodgrain Subsidy Programmes on Anaemia

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  • Sudha Narayanan
  • Nicolas Gerber
  • Udayan Rathore
  • Karthikeya Naraparaju

Abstract

This paper focuses on the consequences of a countrywide guaranteed workfare programme (MGNREGA) and subsidised food distribution scheme (PDS) in India for the prevalence of anaemia, examining whether individuals in districts with a broader reach of these mega-programmes are less likely to be anaemic. Using an Instrumental Variable (IV) approach to address the endogeneity of programme scale, the paper finds that an individual residing in a district where the programmes have broader reach is less likely to suffer from all forms of anaemia and has a lower haemoglobin deficit from the benchmark suggested by the World Health Organisation (WHO) - ranging between 0.91 to 6.2 percentage points for a 10 percentage point expansion in programme scale. While the PDS seems to be more effective in reducing the incidence of mild anaemia than moderate or severe anaemia, while the strength of effects for MGNREGA seem to be the least for mild. These are catch-all effects that represent partial and general equilibrium impacts through multiple pathways. Programme interaction effects suggest the MGNREGA and PDS may be substitutes - associated improvements in anaemia for regions with higher PDS access (MGNREGA participation) are more pronounced when the scale of MGNREGA participation (PDS access) is low. There exist nonlinearities in these relationships, with the efficacy of both programmes varying across scales of implementation.

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  • Sudha Narayanan & Nicolas Gerber & Udayan Rathore & Karthikeya Naraparaju, 2017. "Can Social Safety Nets Protect Public Health? The Effect of India's Workfare and Foodgrain Subsidy Programmes on Anaemia," Working Papers id:12296, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:12296
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    safety nets; PDS; MGNREGA; India; anaemia; workfare programmes; subsidised food distribution scheme; Instrumental Variable (IV); endogeneity of programme; haemoglobin deficit; World Health Organisation (WHO).;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies
    • J48 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Particular Labor Markets; Public Policy
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions

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