Despite its evident importance relatively little is known about links between Body Mass Index (BMI) and participation in workfare programs, particularly in India. Using a unique data set for the Indian state of Rajasthan for 2009-10, this paper attempts to fill this void and examines the...

Using household level data this paper provides systematic evidence on the employment impact of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in three Indian states: Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. We model this as a two stage Heckman procedure where we model selection for NREGS in...

India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been hailed as one of the country’s most creative social initiatives. Since the program was begun only recently (in 2004-05) there is a need to assess household access to this program and persistence of benefits to households not...

Given that the phenomenon of capture of public programs by sections the population is rampant in developing countries, households can indulge in a strategy to improve their participating in public programs by bribing the suppliers of such programs. This is an important issue affecting both the...

This paper analyses the effects of access to Rural Public Works (RPW) and the Public Distribution System (PDS), a public food subsidy programme, on consumption poverty, vulnerability and undernutrition in India drawing, on the large household datasets constructed with National Sample Survey...

This paper has the objective of showing that identity based voting will lead to improvements in household welfare through increased access to welfare programs. Using newly available data from rural India, we establish that identity based voting will lead to enhanced participation in welfare...

Using Vulnerability as Expected Utility (VEU) analysis that permits the decomposition of household vulnerability into its components on a unique data set this paper demonstrates that in rural India household vulnerability is most explained by poverty and idiosyncratic components. So far as risk...

Using a unique panel data for rural India for the periods 1999 and 2006, this paper models vulnerability to poverty. We quantify household vulnerability in rural India in 1999 and 2006, investigate the determinants of ex post poverty as well as ex ante vulnerability, assess the role of ex ante...