Is Workfare Cost-effective against Poverty in a Poor Labor-Surplus Economy?
通过评估印度一个高失业率贫困邦的大型工作福利计划，发现即使考虑放弃的工资，无生产力的工作福利在减贫效果上也不如基本收入计划或配给卡转移支付，其合理性依赖于工作本身的生产力。
Workfare has often seemed an attractive option for making self-targeted transfers to poor people. But is this incentive argument strong enough in practice to prefer unproductive workfare to even untargeted cash transfers? A nonparametric survey-based method is used to assess the cost-effectiveness of a large workfare scheme in a poor state of India with high unemployment. Forgone earnings are evident but fall short of market wages. For the same budget, unproductive workfare has less impact on poverty than either a basic-income scheme or transfers tied to the government's assignment of ration cards. The productivity of workfare is thus crucial to its justification as an antipoverty policy.