Works Program Research Articles

Distress migration and employment in indigenous Odisha, India: Evidence from migrant-sending households.

We convey responses from migrant-sending households in western Odisha from interviews on migration conducted during the lockdown. The majority of migrants are indigenous (referred to as Scheduled Tribes or STs in India), come from very poor households and have little or no education. Prior to the lockdown, the majority of migrants engaged in seasonal, temporary migration—working in dangerous, informal, low-skilled odd jobs for low wages for a few months to supplement incomes at home the rest of the year. Lack of local employment alternatives is cited as the primary reason behind migration. After the lockdown, in the absence of income from migration, households with former migrants hope to earn a livelihood locally—with assistance from National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), India’s public works program. Besides providing employment, NREGA works can include physical and health infrastructure which improve connectivity of health workers. NREGA works can also include community assets, such as facilities for irrigation, rainwater harvesting and plantations as well as child-care centers under India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program. We posit that in the long run, this can improve health, education levels and livelihoods of the local communities, addressing not only the immediate need for local employment but also distress migration in the future.

Social Work's Program By Universitas Negeri Malang Spraying Desinfectant of Distribution of Covid-19 Trafficking Kunti District, Bungkal Ponorogo

Corona virus pandemic or Covid-19 that occurs in all countries in the world causes a decrease in various sectors in life. In a long period of time, no vaccine has been found to prevent transmission of the virus. This has inspired the Covid edition of social works program at Universitas Negeri Malang (State University of Malang) to make a breakthrough in preventing Covid-19 transmission. One of the work programs that showed a breakthrough in preventing Covid-19 transmission was spraying disinfectants in Kunti Village, Bungkal District, Ponorogo.Spraying of disinfectants is carried out 5x within a period of 45 days by using an electric sprayer with disinfectants and water solvents. Spraying disinfectants is expected to kill the virus that is developing in the body of bacteria that will die if exposed to disinfectants, so as to reduce the amount of ODP in the village of Kunti

Public works in Hungary:

This paper reviews the past 10 years of the Hungarian public works system in an international context. It describes changes in the system of public works over time, its various forms, its regional allocation mechanisms and the decision-making and planning process. In that respect, it explores the motivations of the key players, including the central planner, the employment service and the municipalities, as well as their interactions. The analysis is based on interviews conducted in the competent ministries, at national public works providers, the county and district offices of the public employment system and municipalities on one hand, and quantitative data analyses on the entire public works database for the period of 2011-2014, on the other hand.Originally intended to be a labour market policy tool, public works programmes assumed more significant social and municipality management functions, partly because of the extraordinary expansion of their volume. None of their functions performs adequately in the regulatory environment developed; however, they play a key role in mitigating social tensions in disadvantaged rural areas. The planning and regional allocation mechanisms of public works are in many ways similar to the planning procedure of state socialism and provide scope for the of plan bargaining, based on information asymmetry. As a result, this mechanism creates impacts different from the stated objectives in somerespects. The most disadvantaged municipalities thus have proportionately fewer public works participants than would be expected based on the number of long-term unemployed. The system of public works has had a considerable impact on local power structures and transformed the functions of mayors. The responsibility for tackling labour market problems was transferred from the competent employment services to municipalities without expertise, which also had a negative impact on the Public Employment Service.

Estimating the Impacts of EDA Public Works Program Investments on County Employment

Evaluating the effectiveness of government programs is an important topic for economic developers. One popular example is the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Public Works Program, initially established in 1965. Haughwout (1999) found a significant positive impact of EDA public works projects completed in 1990 on county-level employment over the period 1990 to 1994. The authors reexamine whether this effect continues to hold 20 years later by replicating Haughwout’s specification using data from 2010 to 2014. The results are consistent with those originally reported by Haughwout. The authors then extend the analysis by incorporating a spatial econometric approach to examine the existence of potential spillover effects. The results indicate that EDA investments have a significant positive effect on both targeted and neighboring counties’ employment. The findings suggest that public infrastructure investments can be important tools for economic development by positively influencing employment in both the recipient county and neighboring counties.

Joint provision of income and employment support: Evidence from a crisis response in Uruguay

There is an increasing recognition in the policy debate of the importance of providing support to unemployed individuals through a combination of income support and active labour market policies. However, very little evidence exists on the effectiveness of this policy approach (and possible trade-offs) beyond developed economies. We provide one of the first evaluations of these schemes in the context of an emerging economy by looking at a public works programme implemented in Uruguay between 2005 and 2007 as part of a comprehensive cash transfer intervention that reached around 10 per cent of households in the country during a major recession. Exploiting specific eligibility criteria for participation in the cash transfer programme, we use rich administrative data of panel nature to study the effects of (i) participating in the public works programme (active component), (ii) receiving the cash transfer (income-support component) and, (iii) of benefiting of both the active and income-support programmes. We find that participation in the active programme has positive (albeit only marginally significant) effects on the employment probability, but non-significant effects on the quality of the job found. The positive employment effect does not generate displacement effects from participants to non-participants within the same household. However, the effect fades away when participants receive the cash transfer. Finally, the programme did not have any effect on measures of civic engagement and social integration.

PARTISIPASI MASYARAKAT DALAM PENGEMBANGAN KAWASAN AGROPOLITAN PROGRAM PADAT KARYA TUNAI DI DESA TASIKMADU KECAMATAN PALANG KABUPATEN TUBAN

This research aims to analyze the level of community participation in the development of the agropolitan area Cash for Works Program, analyzing internal factors and external factors that influence community participation; and analyze the relationship between internal factors and external factors of participation with the level of community participation in the development of the agropolitan area Cash for Works Program in Tasikmadu Village, Palang District, Tuban Regency. This study uses quantitative methods with survey techniques. The research location is in Tasikmadu Village, Palang District, Tuban Regency because there is an agropolitan area of star fruit plantation. The sampling technique by multistage cluster random sampling was 69 respondents. Data analysis using Spearman Rank correlation test. The results of the study showed: (1) Age of the community included in the category of age 36-55 years, with an average level of education graduating from high school / equivalent, land ownership area ≤ 0.3 ha, income level of the agricultural sector>2.1 million, length live on average>21 years, with the level of cosmopolitan including very low category and stakeholders including quite active category. (2) The level of community participation is included in the category of moderate participation and is on the consultation ladder. (3) Spearman's Rank correlation test shows that internal and external factors that are significantly related to community participation are the extent of land ownership, income level and the level of cosmopolitan, while age, education level, length of stay, and stakeholders are not significantly related.

ANALYZING THE IMPACT OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST PUBLIC WORKS PROJECT ON CRIME

India started the implementation of a rural public works program in 2006, covering all districts of the country within 3 years. The program guarantees 100 days of employment per year at minimum wage to each rural household, with the goal of reducing joblessness and poverty. We exploit the design and implementation of this program to investigate its employment impact on various types of crimes to provide rare evidence on the employment–crime relationship in a developing country context. We find that employment generated by the program has a negative impact on both property crime and violent crime. The same conclusion is reached when we analyze the impact of the program using its staggered rollout structure as the source of identification in a difference‐in‐difference analysis. Although crime elasticities with respect to employment are small, this finding represents another dimension of the social benefit generated by the program. (JEL K4, E24, H54)

Opportunities for women in the green economy and environmental sectors

AbstractSouth Africa's National Environmental Management Act (Act 107 of 1998) recognises the important role of women and youth in environmental management and development. To this end, significant strides have been made by the country in gender mainstreaming. The “Environment Sector Gender Framework” and the “Framework and Strategy Toward Gender Mainstreaming in the Environment Sector 2016–2021” are some of the policy frameworks that have been implemented. In addition, a number of initiatives and programmes such as the Green Fund, established in April 2012, the Groen Sebenza Learnership Programme, and environmental conservation through the Expanded Public Works Programme have been developed. Using a mixed method research design approach, the paper attempts to answer the following questions: Are the concerns and perspectives of women sufficiently integrated in the green economy and environmental sector policies and programmes? What green economy and environmental sector projects are women involved in and what is the proportion of women involved in such projects? Through simple random sampling, the study established that space has been created for women involvement in the green economy and environmental sectors. However, there still remains a need to raise awareness of the available opportunities and interventions to build capacity at project conceptualisation and management levels. The involvement of women further requires meaningful public participation, social inclusion, and the devolution and decentralisation of decision‐making processes.

Productive Workfare? Evidence from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program

Despite the popularity of public works programs in developing countries, there is virtually no evidence on the value of the infrastructure they generate. This paper attempts to start filling this gap in the context of the PSNP – a largescale program implemented in Ethiopia since 2005. Under the program, millions of beneficiaries received social transfers conditional on their participation in activities such as land improvements and soil and water conservation measures. We examine the value of these activities using a satellite-based indicator of agricultural productivity and (reweighted) difference-in-differences estimates. Results show that the program is associated with limited changes in agricultural productivity. The upper bound of the main estimate is equivalent to a 3.6 percent increase in agricultural productivity. This contrasts with existing narratives and calls for more research on the productive effects of public works.

Unity in the eye of the beholder? Reasons for decision in theory and practice in the Ontario Works program

This article interrogates reasons for decision, a central concept in Canadian public law scholarship. Using spatiotemporal scale as an analytical tool, it shows how unified reasons may be more easily recognized at the scale of judicially reviewable administrative decisions common to public law scholarship, yet elusive at the scale of front-line decision making. It then investigates how a variety of mechanisms, including data entries and notes, function together behind the front lines of social assistance agencies in the province of Ontario. Drawing on qualitative research into caseworkers’ decision-making practices, this article illustrates how the ‘reasons’ for a particular administrative decision may be multiplied and fractured across software programs, emails, and physical case files. Further, it demonstrates how notes are both more and less than reasons. As they perform three internal communicative tasks central to administrative governance – recording evidence, explaining decisions, and justifying potentially contentious outcomes to other administrative insiders – notes facilitate decision-making practices that ensure institutionally acceptable outcomes are reached, even as one note may not fully capture the logic underlying a particular decision. Ultimately, this article aims to motivate theoretically inclined legal scholars to reconsider the concept of reasons for decision in light of the decision-making practices of front-line administrators.

Development or Rent Seeking? How Political Influence Shapes Public Works Provision in India

ABSTRACTHow do politicians with influence over public works programs balance their incentives to gain electoral support with their proclivities for rent seeking? This article argues that government elites in parliamentary systems manage this trade-off by concentrating rent-seeking opportunities in their own hands while facilitating efficient public goods provision in the constituencies of their more junior partisan colleagues. Analyses using fine-grained data on road construction in India based on a variety of causal inference strategies support the argument. While ruling party legislators showed higher levels of road provision in their constituencies regardless of ministerial status, road projects in ministers’ constituencies showed higher levels of rent seeking than those in the constituencies of other ruling party legislators. Moreover, consistent with the mechanism, ruling party legislators’ diminished access to rent-seeking opportunities appears to be largely driven by the influence of co-partisan ministers. The findings illuminate how politicized distribution can sometimes mitigate inefficiencies in infrastructure provision.

Labor-Intensive Public Works Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa: Experiences and Implications for Employment Policies

Public works programs (PWPs) in sub-Saharan African countries have re-emerged as an important policy to stimulate employment generation in addition to their protective role such as consumption smoothing. The paper reviews evidence on the extent to which empirical research can substantiate the claim that labor-intensive PWPs in African countries have important economic benefits: simulate job creation, raise earnings and augment employment generation. We also refer to the experiences with PWPs in India and China for comparison. We aim to answer the following questions: Do PWPs stimulate job creation and raise earning potentials of beneficiaries? And, how do these programs augment employment generation? Based on our review complemented with secondary data analyses, we conclude that in addition to their role as an effective anti-poverty instrument, labor-intensive PWPs have important roles in mitigating poor labor market outcomes and thus enhance employment creation. Yet we also find that more systematic investigations on short-term implementation outcomes of PWPs are necessary, and – due to externalities that are not captured by short-term assessments at the program level – long-run impacts on employment and development also need more research attention.

The Marginal Benefit of an Active Labor Market Program Relative to a Public Works Program: Evidence from Papua New Guinea

Abstract Policymakers typically try to address youth unemployment in developing countries through either active labor market programs (ALMPs) or labor-intensive public works programs (LIPWs). We examine whether there is any additional benefit for unemployed youth from participating in a comprehensive ALMP compared to a LIPW. We exploit an unanticipated intervention in the largest employment program in Papua New Guinea, which resulted in one intake of the program completing a LIPW and missing out on a comprehensive ALMP. We conduct a difference-in-difference analysis between participants in the intake that missed out on the ALMP component of the program and participants in the intakes immediately before and after. In contrast to most impact evaluations of ALMPs, we show youth that completed the comprehensive ALMP were around twice as likely to be employed in the formal sector 9–12 months after the program compared to similar youth in the intake that only completed a LIWP. This effect was entirely driven by 20% of youth who participated in the ALMP staying with the employer they were placed with following the end of the program. Surveys of these employers illustrate that they use the ALMP as a low-cost, low-risk, and relatively low-effort way of hiring new employees.

Paid work, unpaid care work and women's empowerment in Nepal

ABSTRACTEmployment and work surveys in Nepal have shown a high concentration of women in certain occupations, being flexible, low paid and requiring low skill. In the far-western region (Jumla District, Karnali Zone), the Government of Nepal provides employment to women and men through a public works programme, the Karnali Employment Programme (KEP). This paper assesses the empowerment potential of the KEP and similar employment programmes, and questions whether paid work leads to economic empowerment for women. It provides a glimpse into work patterns in low-income families in Nepal, and juxtaposes the goal of women's economic empowerment through entry into the labour market with their lived realities and needs. The paper uses ILO's Decent Work framework to argue that two key aspects are critical for women's empowerment through paid work: firstly, quality; and secondly, a positive balance between paid work, unpaid work and care work.

Poverty and Sustainable Development under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with reference to Present Scenario of India: A Case Study of Karbi Anglong District

Poverty is a world-wide and multi-dimensional phenomenon and it exists both in developed and underdeveloped economy. In Rio-Declaration, the commission has given prominence on bio-diversity, climate change, forest management and conservation along with a priority to the poorest sections of the community. The central government of India, under UPA Government, enacted a National Employment Guarantee Act. This would provide a legal guarantee for at least 100 days of employment to begin with an asset-creating public works programmes every year at minimum wages to at least one able bodied person in a family. The act was notified on 7th September, 2005. The significance of the programmes makes the government legally acceptable for providing employment to those who ask for it. It was considered as growth engine for sustainable development of an agricultural economy through the process of providing employment on works that address causes of chronic poverty such as drought, deforestation and soil erosion. The Act seeks to strengthen the natural resource base of rural livelihood and create durable asset in rural areas. The present study has been conducted on the rural population under MGNREGA, who are able to cross their subsistence level of surviving. The incidence of poverty is very high in the different rural areas than estimated by Planning Commission of India (based on Suresh Tendulkar Committee).

Using Information and Technology to Improve Efficacy of Welfare Programs: Evidence From a Field Experiment in India

Does information dissemination among beneficiaries of welfare programs mitigate implementation failures that undermine these programs? We present experimental evidence on this question in the context of the rural public works program in India. A noble intervention that involves accessing micro level online administrative information of the program and disseminating it to the beneficiaries was implemented in parts of the state of Telangana. Using baseline and endline survey as well as administrative data, we evaluate the impact of this intervention on awareness of the provisions, process, delayed payments and uptake of the program in terms of days worked. The design of the intervention ensured us to examine the effect of spillovers from the program as well as look at the impact of heterogeneous intensity of treatment. The findings indicate a positive and significant impact on raising awareness levels, improving the process mechanism and reducing last mile payment delays. However no significant impact was observed on delays that do not occur at the local level and on uptake as well. The impact of spillovers is also found to be largely positive, however no major difference in impact is found because of the heterogeneous treatment intensity.

Ekploitasi Tubuh Aktivis Perempuan Pengurus Cabang Pergerakan Mahasiswa Islam Indonesia Kabupaten Malang

In implementing the works program of the Branch Management of Indonesian Islamic Students Movement of Malang Regency, for the sake of a good and interesting event, the owners of power use female activists to become workers. Women activists must carry out tasks that are not in accordance with their job descriptions, get coercion from fellow activists to carry out tasks that they themselves have not yet experienced and only try first, and the most striking is when female activists are not happy if there is a women's development program. The practice of exploitation of these women activists, seen in this article, uses Michel Foucault's body discipline theory. The body's discipline works as a normalization of behavior designed by utilizing the productive and reproductive abilities of the human body. The practice of power through disciplining the body, creates a situation where the individual body can internalize submission and make it look like a normal state. This practice is what Foucault calls the normalization of power over the individual body. Individuals will never feel that they are being used and subjugated because they already consider it to be within reasonable limits. It can also be said that this is a veiled exploitation.

The Impact of Public Works Programme on Child Labour in Ethiopia

AbstractGiven the conventional wisdom that poverty and associated income shocks are the fundamental causes of child labour, from a policy perspective, there is a perception that social safety net programmes can play a vital role in reducing child labour. While there is extensive evidence that shows the prevalence of child labour is low among beneficiaries of conditional cash transfer programmes, the impact of workfare programs on child labour has been rarely investigated in the economics literature. This paper addresses the issue by evaluating the impact of the public works component of the Productive Safety Net Programme implemented in Ethiopia in 2005. The programme aims to help poor households to build assets and develop resilience to shocks through employment in public projects. Results from child fixed effects estimations show that children in programme beneficiary households are significantly less likely than their counterparts in non‐beneficiary households to be involved in child labour. The findings suggest that, if well targeted, even safety net programmes that do not primarily target child outcomes can be useful in addressing child labour problems.

Impact of the NREGS on Children’s Intellectual Human Capital

This paper uses panel data from the Young Lives Survey to examine the effect of the world’s largest public works program and India’s flagship social protection program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), on children’s learning outcomes such as grade progression, reading comprehension test scores, writing test scores, math test scores, and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) scores. We find that the program has strong positive effects on these outcomes in both the short-and-medium run. Finally, the impact estimates reported here are robust to a number of econometric concerns such as – program placement, selective attrition, and type I error.

New York City fourth graders who receive a climate change curriculum with hydroponic gardening have higher science achievement scores

We compared 2014–15 New York State Science Assessment scores of fourth grade students who received the New York Sun Works (NYSW) Program (n = 638) with two comparison groups: students who received NYSW the following year (n = 993) and students attending matched schools (n = 1490). We first applied a multi-level regression model to compare scores between NYSW recipients and the first comparison group, which revealed non-significant but higher scores among NYSW recipients. We then compared the achievement scores of the NYSW recipients to both comparison groups using Welsch two sample t-tests. On average, NYSW recipients scored significantly higher than both the comparison groups (p < 0.001). Results suggest that further testing should explore the impact of climate change education on science achievement.