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How much do small old age pensions and widow’s pensions help the poor in India?

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  • Christopher Garroway

    (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) South and South-West Asia Office)

Abstract

The National Social Assistance Programme consists of five social assistance transfers, which form the core of India’s fledgling minimum social protection floor. These transfers have been scaled up over the last decade and further steps will soon be taken towards their universalization with exclusion criteria. This paper provides a rigorous evaluation of two of the NSAP schemes, the old age pension and the widow’s pension. Using the 2005 Indian Human Development Survey data’s detailed information on household income and consumption expenditure, the paper measures the impact of the two pensions on household’s incomes, consumption and poverty status, using the propensity score matching estimator. The pensions are found to vary dramatically in their effectiveness given the wide diversity of recipients across income quintiles, spatial location, and social group. The widow’s pension is shown to reduce poverty among recipients by about 2.7 percentage points. Government attempts to target the pensions to poor households have been ineffective, and steps towards universalization may in fact improve their effectiveness.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Garroway, 2013. "How much do small old age pensions and widow’s pensions help the poor in India?," Development Papers 1306, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) South and South-West Asia Office.
    • Handle: RePEc:eap:sswadp:dp1306
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Dominic Richardson & UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti, 2018. "Key Findings on Families, Family Policy and the Sustainable Development Goals: Synthesis Report," Papers inorer948, Innocenti Research Report.
    2. Sudha Narayanan & Nicolas Gerber, 2015. "Social safety nets for food and nutritional security in India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2015-031, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    3. Unnikrishnan, Vidhya & Imai, Katsushi S., 2020. "Does the old-age pension scheme improve household welfare? Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    4. Sudha Narayanan Narayanan & Nicolas Gerber, 2016. "Safety Nets for Food and Nutritional Security in India," FOODSECURE Working papers 37, LEI Wageningen UR.

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