Economic Valuation of Welfare Entitlements

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About the Organization

Founded in 2013, Indus Action is one of India’s leading policy implementation organisations dedicated to enabling sustainable access to social protection for vulnerable citizens. We aim to enable over 800 million vulnerable citizens in India to move irreversibly out of extreme poverty by facilitating access to critical government support to which they are entitled. We use inclusive, tech-enabled, citizen-centric social protection systems in partnership with government departments. Since inception, we have supported more than 1.9 million citizens in accessing welfare entitlements across workstreams of education, labour, food security, access to public services and pandemic relief.

Job Description

Indus Action’s work spans different welfare entitlements that vary widely in their social and economic returns to those receiving them. For example, a seat in a private school for eight years of education under the RTE Section 12(1)(c) for a school-going child is likely to yield substantive social and economic returns over the individual's life. Similarly, programs to support new livelihood-generating opportunities are likely to generate long-term income gains for women who belong to SHGs. On the other hand, some entitlements are aimed at easing shorter-term shocks/events, such as covering medical expenses or maternity benefits, but with the potential to prevent families from falling into poverty and debt traps. To make our efforts comparable across entitlements, it has become increasingly vital to understand the total economic and social impact of each entitlement, not just its monetary value. We are looking to contract an economist to compute the Social Returns on Investment (SROI), or another relevant framework for economic valuation of the entitlements we work on. The focus of this assignment will be on the following entitlements 1

• Free private school education under the RTE Section 12.1(c)
• Selected scholarship schemes for school-going children (1-2 schemes)
• Welfare benefits for construction and unorganised sector workers under the BoCW and UWA, respectively (between 8-10 key schemes such as pensions, maternity benefits, medical reimbursements, ex-gratia payments for heat waves etc.).

Job Responsibilities

The consultant will:

• Develop or adapt a relevant framework for measuring the economic value of welfare entitlements listed above
• Develop a plan for computing the economic value through secondary research and/or original field surveys. The need for original field surveys must be discussed mutually and within reasonable budgets. For the field surveys, the economist will develop the 1 In terms of geographical scope of the value of entitlements, we are expecting an average value computed for India on the whole questionnaires and research design in collaboration with Indus Action staff, while Indus Action will implement the surveys.
• Compute the economic value of entitlements based on the research conducted for 2025-26.
• Develop a calculator for Indus Action to update calculations as metrics evolve. Share reproducible code/Excel with Indus Action.
• Indus Action is open to the original surveys serving the dual purpose of supporting the computation of the economic value of entitlements, and aligned, publishable research co-authored collaboratively with the consultant. Survey questions in benefit of research publications may be included by the consultant in discussion with Indus Action.

Education Qualification/Required Skills & Experience

• The ideal candidate should have a PhD or Masters degree in Economics with significant experience conducting research on economic valuation/SROI in the field of human development/health/social welfare, among others.
• This is a consulting position. So the candidate may hold other positions (full or part-time), but must be able to commit the fixed number of days per month as mentioned in their proposal.
• The proposal must clearly outline whether SROI or some other similar or a combination of methods are best suited to this assignment. We understand the limited data you have at this point, and will assess your proposal based on that limitation.

Terms of engagement

• We will require a weekly check-in with the Director of Impact and Learning at Indus Action to update on progress and for planning.
• We will review the progress made with Indus Action’s Board Sub-Committee on Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL) against each milestone. The Director of Impact and Learning will anchor this process.
• Any data shared by Indus Action must be treated as confidential.
• You will need to have your own laptop/computer and a copy of the statistical software you intend to use if it is a paid software like STATA. We use R at Indus Action.
• The IP for the economic valuation framework and strategy will be with Indus Action.

For more information please check the Link

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