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Identity Verification Standards in Welfare Programs: Experimental Evidence from India

Karthik Muralidharan; Paul Niehaus; Sandip Sukhtankar · The Review of Economics and Statistics 107(2), 372-392 · 2025

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Type
Article
Author
Karthik Muralidharan; Paul Niehaus; Sandip Sukhtankar
Identifier
DOI 10.1162/rest_a_01296
Accessed
2026-09-01
Reliability notes
NBER Working Paper 26744 (2020).

Claims citing this source

2 claims
EstablishedMuralidharan, Niehaus and Sukhtankar found that stricter biometric verification in a major Indian welfare programme reduced leakage, but 1.5 to 2 million legitimate beneficiaries lost benefits at some point, mostly because of how the transition was managed.EstablishedIntroducing stricter biometric identity verification into India's largest social protection programme reduced corruption, but 1.5-2 million legitimate beneficiaries lost access to benefits at some point during the reforms; the authors attribute the harm mainly to how the transition was managed.