Recipients of public aid are not passive beneficiaries. They are people with a surprisingly high level of agency, who can turn our ideas of consumption upside down.
wow. i cannot write in words the feeling that I experience when I read something that is in my set of "unknown unknowns" and which then significantly changes the model with which I look at the world.
thank you so much sir for this.
also, if it's ok, can you please share which courses/college you have pursued.
Great read. I don't have full understanding of the HCES dataset, but I imagine the households sampled are across economic strata. And assuming that a high percentage of eligible households would actually enroll for the welfare scheme, how are you ensuring the control group of non-beneficiaries belongs to the same economic group? Otherwise, how much of these results and inferences are attributable to the economic differences between the two groups - unaffected or modified by the welfare scheme intervention? For some welfare schemes electricity subsidy, comparison between states that offer the same and others that don't, might be a way?
The underlying premise which is being investigated, on whether incremental disposable income in the hands of households that typically don't have any, produces irrational decisions - is quite intriguing. Optimising for long term benefits is predicated on trust or faith in the probability of long term success. Apart from other things, the quantum of the welfare benefit and the individual's trust in the continued availability of the incremental disposable income and ability to make the sustained investments for long term benefits to see the payoffs should influence choices. So they would be very rational - just the goals and the benefits that are optimisation targets are different. I suspect it would be more instructive to see this as a game of strategy where the game is repeated and see how the choices evolve.
The comparability of households (including MPCE) is ensured using propensity score matching. There's some details about that at the end of the post in the section about methodology. The numbers we see here are from comparisons between households that are nearly identical, other than whether they belong to the treatment or control group.
On your second point, perhaps some longitudinal analysis is needed. I'm actually waiting for NFHS results which will help validate all this
Amazing work, Jaidev. Every new post is enlightening. This is selfless service to the world. I look forward to the next one. I don't understand statistics much, and i still can take something valuable away from it.
> they knew they were killing themselves. They had no choice.
I see such groups everyday around me. It may also be worth noting that the substances in question are habit forming and for some people that forms a viscious cycle where necessity leads to consumption, then consumption leads to habit that hinders their ability to lift themselves 'up'. Family dynamics sometimes ensure their dependents are caught in the loop too; they cannot even function at half their potential. Simpletons like me just categorise this under one phrase — "generational trauma" :)
wow. i cannot write in words the feeling that I experience when I read something that is in my set of "unknown unknowns" and which then significantly changes the model with which I look at the world.
thank you so much sir for this.
also, if it's ok, can you please share which courses/college you have pursued.
Great read. I don't have full understanding of the HCES dataset, but I imagine the households sampled are across economic strata. And assuming that a high percentage of eligible households would actually enroll for the welfare scheme, how are you ensuring the control group of non-beneficiaries belongs to the same economic group? Otherwise, how much of these results and inferences are attributable to the economic differences between the two groups - unaffected or modified by the welfare scheme intervention? For some welfare schemes electricity subsidy, comparison between states that offer the same and others that don't, might be a way?
The underlying premise which is being investigated, on whether incremental disposable income in the hands of households that typically don't have any, produces irrational decisions - is quite intriguing. Optimising for long term benefits is predicated on trust or faith in the probability of long term success. Apart from other things, the quantum of the welfare benefit and the individual's trust in the continued availability of the incremental disposable income and ability to make the sustained investments for long term benefits to see the payoffs should influence choices. So they would be very rational - just the goals and the benefits that are optimisation targets are different. I suspect it would be more instructive to see this as a game of strategy where the game is repeated and see how the choices evolve.
The comparability of households (including MPCE) is ensured using propensity score matching. There's some details about that at the end of the post in the section about methodology. The numbers we see here are from comparisons between households that are nearly identical, other than whether they belong to the treatment or control group.
On your second point, perhaps some longitudinal analysis is needed. I'm actually waiting for NFHS results which will help validate all this
Amazing work, Jaidev. Every new post is enlightening. This is selfless service to the world. I look forward to the next one. I don't understand statistics much, and i still can take something valuable away from it.
> they knew they were killing themselves. They had no choice.
I see such groups everyday around me. It may also be worth noting that the substances in question are habit forming and for some people that forms a viscious cycle where necessity leads to consumption, then consumption leads to habit that hinders their ability to lift themselves 'up'. Family dynamics sometimes ensure their dependents are caught in the loop too; they cannot even function at half their potential. Simpletons like me just categorise this under one phrase — "generational trauma" :)