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  5. Social Welfare Portability and Migration: Evidence from India’s Public Distribution System

American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy

ISSN 1945-7731 (Print) | ISSN 1945-774X (Online)

Social Welfare Portability and Migration: Evidence from India’s Public Distribution System

  • Travis Baseler
  • Ambar Narayan
  • Odyssia Ng
  • Sutirtha Sinha Roy
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (Forthcoming)

Abstract

This paper studies a new program designed to make food entitlements portable throughout India. We first characterize the state of food entitlement portability using mystery shoppers and surveys of migrants and distributors. We then inform households about the program, and barriers to using it, through a cluster-randomized controlled trial. Treatment impacts on beliefs about entitlement portability were initially positive, but later turned negative following a general rise in beliefs. These patterns are consistent with our experiment increasing awareness of the program but decreasing trust in its implementation. Migration to cities decreased, suggesting that access to food affects migrants’ destination choices.

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