Journal of Public Economics · 2026 · Pushkar Maitra、Sandip Mitra、Dilip Mookherjee、Sujata Visaria
中文摘要
过去十年间,印度人民党(BJP)领导的中央政府对福利项目实施了多项改革,旨在压缩地方官员操纵受益人遴选或挪用资金的空间。尽管如此,邦和地方政府在受益人遴选以及中央政府出资福利待遇的地方发放方面仍保有相当大的自由裁量权,并维持着对邦出资项目的独占控制。我们利用来自西孟加拉邦的纵向家庭调查数据,评估这些改革对福利项目亲贫瞄准以及印度人民党与该邦执政党草根国大党(TMC)之间政治竞争的影响。我们发现,与2010–2013年相比,2014–2018年期间福利项目更好地瞄准了较贫困和社会处境不利的家庭。然而,福利改革并不能解释印度人民党得票率为何上升,因为其从新的全国性项目中获得的选举收益,被其损失所超过——这些损失源于新邦级项目与原有福利项目的受益人对草根国大党支持的增加。
Abstract
Over the past decade, India’s BJP-led national government has undertaken various reforms to welfare programs, aiming to reduce the scope for local officials to manipulate beneficiary selection or divert funds. Nevertheless state and local governments retained considerable discretion over beneficiary selection and the local delivery of central government funded welfare benefits, and have maintained exclusive control over state-funded programs. We use longitudinal household survey data from the state of West Bengal to evaluate the effects of these reforms on pro-poor targeting of welfare programs, and political competition between the BJP and the TMC, the incumbent political party in the state. We find that welfare programs were better targeted toward poorer and socially disadvantaged households in the period 2014–2018 than in 2010–2013. However the welfare reforms do not explain why the BJP’s vote share increased, as its electoral gains from the new nationwide programs were outweighed by their losses, stemming from the increased support for the TMC from recipients of new state and pre-existing benefits.