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Paper short abstract:

Social protection policies targeted on the disabled are not frequently evaluated in the context of developing countries. I have evaluated Indira Gandhi National Disability Programme, a social protection policy targeted on poor disabled in India on income, multidimensional poverty, and medical exp

Paper long abstract:

The paper examines the impact of the Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme

(IGNDPS), a social assistance programme targeted at poor, disabled persons in India. Although

disability affects all aspects of life, it is well known that people who are disabled incur a higher

level of medical expenditure and experience higher levels of poverty and those households

have lower earnings. This paper evaluates if access to IGNDPS reduces economic and

multidimensional poverty and improves the allocation of expenses incurred for medical

purposes and household earnings. For this purpose, we have combined propensity score

matching and the difference-in-differences method in a three-way fixed effect setting in panel

data. Further, we have also weighted the regression estimates with their propensity score to

address concerns on sample selection bias. Our empirical results suggest that access to the

Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme (IGNDPS) has helped households increase

the share of expenses incurred on in-patient medical services. Sex-based disaggregated results

suggest that the female programme recipients have experienced a higher level of economic and

multidimensional poverty and a decline in the share of out-patient medical expenses.

We also find that there are regional heterogeneities in the results. The programme has helped

recipients living in metro regions to reduce multidimensional poverty, with no such effects

found in the non-metro areas. Overall, the results obtained from the paper suggest that the

social assistance programme has not reduced the burdens faced by the disabled.