The challenge
Much of the subsidised rice in Indonesia's huge Raskin program never reached the eligible households it was meant for.
The case
About 30% of Indonesia's households were supposed to get subsidised rice each month through Raskin, 'Rice for the Poor'. Working with the government's poverty reduction team, TNP2K, researchers randomly chose 378 of 572 villages in three provinces to receive identification cards, mailed to eligible households, with information about the program; the other 194 villages served as a comparison. Eligible households in card villages received 26% more subsidy, and ineligible households got no less, so the gain came from less leakage. Printing the official price on the cards raised the subsidy a further 21%. The evaluation ran in 2012, and in 2013 the government, partly based on the results, scaled up social assistance identification cards to 15.5 million households, more than 65 million people.
Why it worked
Simply giving people clear, official proof of their entitlements strengthened their hand with local officials and cut leakage. It's a low-cost fix that the government adopted at national scale.
Sources
- Banerjee, A., Hanna, R., Kyle, J., Olken, B. A., & Sumarto, S. (2018). Tangible information and citizen empowerment: Identification cards and food subsidy programs in Indonesia. Journal of Political Economy, 126(2), 451–491.
- MIT News (2018). For food aid recipients, information is power.
- J-PAL. Empowering citizens with information (policy brief).
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