Generally, the fiscal implications of social protection programmes are evaluated, but not so much on the economic impacts these schemes have on macro aggregates such as output, employment, income and revenue. This motivated us to evaluate the economic impact of three major social protection programmes, namely, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Indira Awaas Yojana, and the National Social Assistance Programme in 2011-12 using a social accounting matrix. It is found that these programmes have significant impacts on output across different sectors of the economy, on income generation and distribution of different household classes in urban and rural areas, on employment across different sectors of the economy, and even on government revenue generation.
