Government Scheme Overload? Take-up and Targeting in a Multi-Scheme Context

Policy Context

Developing countries are often faced with a dilemma: governments offer a variety of social protection programs to people in need, but take-up rates remain quite low. While researchers have studied interventions meant to improve the take-up and targeting of specific welfare schemes, little is known about how individuals navigate the entire system of welfare schemes and decide which ones to apply to (if any). Mitali investigates the following research question: How does the quantity of government welfare schemes offered to individuals affect the take-up and targeting of these benefits?

Exposure to a large quantity of welfare benefits can have countervailing effects. On the one hand, when individuals have many welfare schemes to choose from, they can make a targeted choice in applying to the set of benefits that fit their needs the most. On the other hand, they might be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of schemes they could apply to and not know where to start, leading them to miss out on key benefits. Therefore, studying how individuals make decisions on how many and which welfare schemes to apply to can shed light on the role that behavioral elements of choice play in a social security benefits context.

Mitali studies the role that the quantity of schemes plays in take-up decisions in India, a country that offers a large quantity of social protection schemes. The Central Government of India implements over 800 centrally sponsored and central sector schemes each year, spanning many sectors. A particularly vulnerable group that is often eligible for multiple schemes are internal migrants, who often migrate from rural areas to work as daily wage laborers in urban hubs. While these migrants and their families are eligible for over 20 entitlements, they are often unaware of the schemes they are eligible for and have not applied to or received the benefits.

Pilot Study

Design

Using CEGA funding, Mitali implemented a pilot study in New Delhi, India with 2,000+ internal migrants to test a small-scale intervention that varied the cadence of information frontline workers shared with internal migrants on the number of schemes they were eligible for. The intervention consisted of one control arm and two treatment arms. In all groups, frontline workers implemented a survey to assess migrant eligibility for various social protection schemes and helped register migrants for the schemes they could with the migrants’ readily available documentation. In the first treatment arm, frontline workers shared information with migrants on one additional scheme they were eligible for (benefits, documentation needed, and next steps required to apply). In the second treatment arm, frontline workers will shared information on multiple schemes the migrant was eligible for. In the control group, frontline workers operated with no protocol and shared information on additional schemes at their own discretion. This pilot assessed how migrants’ demand for information about schemes and take-up rates of those schemes were influenced by the size of the basket of schemes they received information about.

Results

Overall, the pilot revealed evidence of “scheme overload.”
1. Less is more: In Treatment 1 (single-scheme), migrants went on to apply to around 1 additional scheme on average. In Treatment 2 (multi-scheme), the average number of additional schemes migrants attempted to apply to was lower by 0.203 schemes. Given the sample size, this translates to 535 fewer schemes attempted and 498 schemes fewer availed by migrants in Treatment 2.
2. Paper trumps verbal information: Both treatment groups’ take-up rates were higher than that of those in the control, indicating that paper information on “additional schemes” was better than verbal information.
3. It’s not complexity: The additional schemes availed weren’t more complex – migrants did not spend more or less time applying to schemes across arms.
4. Revisits are driven by “on-the-spot” schemes: People who didn’t avail any schemes during the first interaction with a frontline worker were more likely to revisit a frontline worker in their office.
5. Quantity-constrained protocols don’t trade-off with reaching migrants: Frontline workers had the same levels of productivity when given specific protocols to follow compared to without these protocols.

Next Steps

Mitali is currently planning a full-scale study to gather more evidence on “scheme overload” and investigate its welfare effects.