Social Welfare Portability and Migration: Evidence from India’s Public Distribution System

This paper studies a new program designed to make food entitlements portable throughout India. We first characterize the state of food entitlement portability using mystery shoppers and surveys of migrants and distributors. We then inform households about the program—and barriers to using it—through a cluster randomized controlled trial. Treatment impacts on beliefs about entitlement portability were initially positive but later turned negative following a general rise in beliefs. These patterns are consistent with our experiment increasing awareness of the program but decreasing trust in its implementation. Migration to cities decreased, suggesting access to food affects migrants’ destination choices. (JEL D12, D83, H53, I38, O12, O18, R23)