There is substantial variation in key design elements across the 11 public works programs included in our study. Below (and in Table 1), we summarize the following features: duration of employment, targeting, wages, maximum earnings, and type of work. Overall, the public works programs included in this review are qualitatively like those from other low- and middle-income countries described in Subbarao et al. (2013), except for those that allow for repeated participation every year, like India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) or the Ethiopia rural Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), which are not represented here.

**Duration of employment.** Public works programs are designed to offer employment for a limited duration: the median participant is offered the equivalent of approximately 4 months of work. The maximum duration is 2.5 months in Djibouti and up to 18 months in the Egypt Community program. The programs can provide consecutive months of employment, though some spread days worked within one year or over longer periods. For instance, the two programs in Comoros and Ethiopia offer a total of 9 months of work, but for 3 months per year over 3 years. The program in Lao PDR offers employment during specific times in the agricultural cycle, spreading 75 days (~3.75 months) of employment over two full rainy seasons (~1.5 years).<sup>8</sup> The maximum duration of employment for all programs included in our review is summarized in Table 1.

**Targeting.** All programs applied some form of geographic targeting. Four programs focused on urban areas, four on rural areas, and three covered both (Table 1). All programs used self-targeting, whereby the program is advertised, and individuals are invited to apply if they are interested. Many targeted specific groups such as youth (in Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone), or women (in Djibouti, the Egypt Community program, and Lao PDR).

**Wages.** Daily wages differ widely, ranging from $2.5 in Sierra Leone to $14.7 in the Egypt Community program, with a median of $9.60 (see Table 1).<sup>9</sup> Setting a wage for a public works program involves trade-offs (Bertrand et al., 2021). On the one hand, setting a low wage can facilitate self-targeting by discouraging individuals who already work and have higher earnings from leaving their occupation to join the program. On the other hand, setting a higher wage can enhance take-up as well as lead to larger impacts on earnings among individuals most in need. Five of the 11 programs set wages within 20% of the minimum wage, with 2 programs further below and 2 programs further above the minimum wage (see Table 1 and additional details in Table A2). This again shows substantial variation between programs. In practice, however, it is not always clear that the minimum wage is an appropriate benchmark, because a large share of workers in low-income

> 8 There is some variation in the number of days offered within some programs. For instance, the Sierra Leone program offered 50-75 days of work and the Egypt Infrastructure program offered 1 week to 3 months of work. In these instances, we have used the maximum days allowed in the program in the calculations, since the average time worked is not always available. In the Egypt Community program, the duration of participation was set between 12-18 months; however, on average, individuals work up to 11.7 months. 9 All wages are converted to US dollars using the 2021 PPP conversion factor from the World Bank’s International Comparison Program (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP).

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