Temporary employment program, stabilization of consumption and employability

The document, “Temporary Employment Program, Consumption Stabilization and Employability” , attempts to identify the effects of the most comprehensive temporary employment program implemented in Bolivia, the National Emergency Employment Plan (PLANE), on per capita caloric intake and prospects. future employment and wages. Using estimation and inference methods that assume the absence of confounding factors, we found that PLANE was successful as a consumption stabilization scheme – it increases per capita caloric intake in households where at least one member has participated in the program, but not had no effect on either post-program employment probabilities or post-program wages. This evidence suggests that, although public employment programs can be useful as social protection policies in times of recession, they help to stabilize the consumption of poor households with unskilled heads of household; they are not good alternatives to improve the employability of vulnerable populations.