Workers' Benefits from Bolivia's Emergency Social Fund

Bolivia's emergency social fund (ESF) was established to cushion the adverse effects of its economic crisis and subsequent stabilization program on the poor and to facilitate transition through the phases of structural adjustment. The ESF was established explicitly as a temporary financial institution outside of the normal bureaucratic structure of the government. While its primary emphasis was to provide temporary employment opportunities, it differed from more typical government works projects in being demand-driven. This paper is concerned with measuring the effect of the ESF program on employment and income of workers in the ESF projects. The analysis is based on the results of a survey administered to workers in ESF infrastructure projects and to the population at large by the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE) of Bolivia. The paper identifies the characteristics of the workers in the ESF infrastructure projects and compares them with the population in general, and workers in the construction sector in particular. The authors perform a counterfactual simulation, asking what would have been the position of the workers in the absence of the ESF program. Based on the simulation, they infer what the employment and income effect of the ESF program has been on its beneficiaries.