IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/diedps/92015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can public works infrastructure affect employment outcomes? Evidence from the NREGS in India

Author

Listed:
  • Gehrke, Esther

Abstract

In this paper, I look at the effects of the infrastructure created under India’s public works programme – the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) – on employment outcomes. In order to attribute observed outcomes to infrastructure creation, I address all potential causal mechanisms through which the NREGS could affect employment, namely increases in productive investments and the demand for labour among NREGS beneficiaries, an increase in wages in the implementing villages, as well as an increase in economic activity due to the infrastructure created with the NREGS. Lastly, I analyse which types of infrastructure are particularly beneficial for increasing long-term employment. The results of this paper are as follows. I find little evidence that village employment levels are affected by increased investments of the NREGS beneficiaries or by wage changes due to the NREGS. In contrast, I find that the creation of productive infrastructure through the NREGS can indeed positively affect employment outcomes in targeted villages. Which infrastructure projects are most promising depends on the sector in which employment is to be created and on the social group that is to benefit. Effects on total employment are largest when infrastructure is targeted towards land development.

Suggested Citation

  • Gehrke, Esther, 2015. "Can public works infrastructure affect employment outcomes? Evidence from the NREGS in India," IDOS Discussion Papers 9/2015, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:diedps:92015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/199459/1/die-dp-2015-09.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Basu, Arnab K. & Chau, Nancy H. & Kanbur, Ravi, 2009. "A theory of employment guarantees: Contestability, credibility and distributional concerns," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 482-497, April.
    2. Clément Imbert & John Papp, 2015. "Labor Market Effects of Social Programs: Evidence from India's Employment Guarantee," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 233-263, April.
    3. Esther Gehrke, 2019. "An Employment Guarantee as Risk Insurance? Assessing the Effects of the NREGS on Agricultural Production Decisions," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 33(2), pages 413-435.
    4. Bhargava, Anil K., 2013. "The Impact of India’s Rural Employment Guarantee on Demand for Agricultural Technology," 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. 150163, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 1992. "Workfare versus Welfare Incentive Arguments for Work Requirements in Poverty-Alleviation Programs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 249-261, March.
    6. Harold Alderman & Ruslan Yemtsov, 2014. "How Can Safety Nets Contribute to Economic Growth?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(1), pages 1-20.
    7. Radhika Lal & Steve Miller & Maikel Lieuw-Kie-Song & Daniel Kostzer, 2010. "Public Works and Employment Programmes: Towards a Long-Term Development Approach," Working Papers 66, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    8. Erlend Berg & Sambit Bhattacharyya & D Rajasekhar & R Manjula, 2014. "Can Public Employment Schemes Increase Equilibrium Wages? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 14/317, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    9. Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize, 2012. "Is There Too Much Hype about Index-based Agricultural Insurance?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(2), pages 187-200, February.
    10. Maikel Lieuw-Kie-Song, 2011. "Integrating Public Works and Cash Transfers in Ethiopia: Implications for Social Protection, Employment and Decent Work," Working Papers 84, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    11. repec:bri:cmpowp:13/317 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gehrke, Esther & Hartwig, Renate, 2018. "Productive effects of public works programs: What do we know? What should we know?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 111-124.
    2. Loewe, Markus & Zintl, Tina & Fritzenkötter, Jörn & Gantner, Verena & Kaltenbach, Regina & Pohl, Lena, 2020. "Community effects of cash-for-work programmes in Jordan: Supporting social cohesion, more equitable gender roles and local economic development in contexts of flight and migration," IDOS Studies, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), volume 103, number 103.
    3. Altenburg, Tilman & Kulke, Elmar & Reeg, Caroline & Peterskovsky, Lisa & Hampel-Milagrosa, Aimée, 2016. "Making retail modernisation in developing countries inclusive: a development policy perspective," IDOS Discussion Papers 2/2016, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    4. Gehrke, Esther & Hartwig, Renate, 2015. "How can public works programmes create sustainable employment?," IDOS Discussion Papers 11/2015, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    5. Reeg, Caroline, 2015. "Micro and small enterprises as drivers for job creation and decent work," IDOS Discussion Papers 10/2015, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    6. Serdeczny, Olivia & Waters, Eleanor & Chan, Sander, 2016. "Non-economic loss and damage in the context of climate change: understanding the challenges," IDOS Discussion Papers 3/2016, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    7. Sheahan, Megan & Liu, Yanyan & Narayanan, Sudha & Barrett, Christopher B., 2015. "Disaggregated labor supply implications of guaranteed employment in India," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 237345, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gehrke, Esther & Hartwig, Renate, 2015. "How can public works programmes create sustainable employment?," IDOS Discussion Papers 11/2015, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    2. Gehrke, Esther & Hartwig, Renate, 2018. "Productive effects of public works programs: What do we know? What should we know?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 111-124.
    3. Parantap Basu & Rajesh Raj Natarajan & Kunal Sen, 2020. "Administrative failures in anti-poverty programmes and household welfare: An investigation of India's employment guarantee programme," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-41, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Jules Gazeaud & Victor Stephane, 2023. "Productive Workfare? Evidence from Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(1), pages 265-290, January.
    5. Klonner, Stefan & Oldiges, Christian, 2022. "The welfare effects of India’s rural employment guarantee," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    6. Parantap Basu & Kunal Sen, 2015. "Welfare Implications of the Indian Employment Guarantee Programme with a Wage Payment Delay," CEGAP Working Papers 2015_01, Durham University Business School.
    7. Deininger,Klaus W. & Nagarajan,Hari Krishnan & Singh,Sudhir K. & Deininger,Klaus W. & Nagarajan,Hari Krishnan & Singh,Sudhir K., 2016. "Short-term effects of India's employment guarantee program on labor markets and agricultural productivity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7665, The World Bank.
    8. Merfeld, Joshua D., 2019. "Spatially heterogeneous effects of a public works program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 151-167.
    9. Chakravarty, Shourish & Mullally, Conner C., 2018. "Impact of NREGS on Forest Cover," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274250, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    10. Fetzer, Thiemo, 2019. "Can Workfare Programs Moderate Conflict? Evidence from India," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1220, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    11. Deininger, Klaus & Liu, Yanyan, 2019. "Heterogeneous welfare impacts of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: Evidence from Andhra Pradesh, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 98-111.
    12. Thiemo Fetzer, 2020. "Can Workfare Programs Moderate Conflict? Evidence from India," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(6), pages 3337-3375.
    13. Li, Yanan & Liu, Yanyan, 2016. "Does Providing Public Works Increase Workers' Wage Bargaining Power in Private Sectors? -- Evidence from National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 236181, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    14. Deepak Varshney & Deepti Goel & J. V. Meenakshi, 2018. "The Impact of MGNREGA on Agricultural Outcomes and the Rural Labour Market: A Matched DID Approach," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 61(4), pages 589-621, December.
    15. Zimmermann, Laura, 2020. "Why Guarantee Employment? Evidence from a Large Indian Public-Works Program," GLO Discussion Paper Series 504, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    16. Misra, Kartik, 2019. "Does historical land inequality attenuate the positive impact of India’s employment guarantee program?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 1-1.
    17. Girish Bahal, 2020. "Estimating the Impact of Welfare Programs on Agricultural Output: Evidence from India," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(3), pages 982-998, May.
    18. Sheahan, Megan & Liu, Yanyan & Narayanan, Sudha & Barrett, Christopher B., 2015. "Disaggregated labor supply implications of guaranteed employment in India," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 237345, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    19. Deininger,Klaus W. & Jin,Songqing & Nagarajan,Hari Krishnan & Singh,Sudhir K., 2020. "Political Reservation and Female Labor Force Participation in Rural India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9350, The World Bank.
    20. Klonner, Stefan & Oldiges , Christian, 2014. "Safety Net for India's Poor or Waste of Public Funds? Poverty and Welfare in the Wake of the World's Largest Job Guarantee Program," Working Papers 0564, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:diedps:92015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ditubde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.