Did Latvia's Public Works Program Mitigate the Impact of the 2008-2010 Crisis?
To mitigate the impact of the 2008-2010 global financial crisis on vulnerable households, the Government of Latvia established Workplaces with Stipends, an emergency public works program that targeted registered unemployed people who were not recei...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/07/16530330/latvias-public-works-program-mitigate-impact-2008-2010-crisis http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11999 |
| Summary: | To mitigate the impact of the 2008-2010
global financial crisis on vulnerable households, the
Government of Latvia established Workplaces with Stipends,
an emergency public works program that targeted registered
unemployed people who were not receiving unemployment
benefits. This paper evaluates the targeting performance and
welfare impacts of the program. It exploits the
over-subscription of Workplaces with Stipends to define a
control group. The paper finds that the program was
successful at targeting poor and vulnerable people, and that
leakage to non-poor households was small. Using propensity
score matching, the paper finds that the program's
stipend mitigated the impact of job loss and, in the short
term, raised participating household incomes by 37 percent
relative to similar households not benefiting from the
program. The paper also finds that the foregone income for
this program was less than foregone incomes estimated in
other countries. This suggests a dearth of income-generating
opportunities in Latvia; thus the program provided temporary
employment opportunities and helped the unemployed mitigate
the impact of the crisis. However, relative to the depth of
the crisis in Latvia, the Workplaces with Stipends program
scale was small, which meant long waiting periods for
program applicants. |
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