Tangible Information and Citizen Empowerment: Identification Cards and Food Subsidy Programs in Indonesia

Local officials in developing countries do not always implement programs as the central government intends, often due to corruption. Directly informing citizens about their rights may result in citizens receiving more, but whether this occurs in practice is ultimately an empirical question. In an experiment in over 550 villages, we test whether mailing cards with program information to targeted beneficiaries increases the subsidy they receive from a subsidized rice program. On net, beneficiaries received 26 percent more subsidy in card villages. Ineligible households received no less, so this represents substantially lower leakage.

Funding: This project was financially supported by the Australian Government through the Poverty Reduction Support Facility. Jordan Kyle acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 2009082932. This research was also supported by AidData at the College of William & Mary and the USAID Global Development Lab through cooperative agreement AID-OAA-A-12-00096.