We experimentally analyze the effects of an intervention to induce the renewal of identification cards on access to a government social program in Panamá. On‐time renewals and access to government transfers increased by 10 and 3.6 percentage points, respectively. Simple reminders about expiration dates generated larger effects than also enabling individuals to renew their documents through an online platform, which users struggled to use despite its being designed to simplify the process. The results suggest that increasing access to identity documentation can reduce exclusion errors in social programs and that simply granting access to e‐government platforms may not necessarily improve public service delivery.

中文翻译：

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扩大身份证和社会计划的使用范围：来自巴拿马的实验证据

我们通过实验分析了更新身份证的干预措施对巴拿马政府社会计划的影响。按时续约和获得政府转移支付的机会分别增加了 10 个百分点和 3.6 个百分点。关于过期日期的简单提醒所产生的效果比让个人通过在线平台更新文档产生的效果更大，尽管该平台旨在简化流程，但用户很难使用该平台。结果表明，增加对身份文件的访问可以减少社会计划中的排除错误，而仅仅授予电子政务平台的访问权限可能不一定会改善公共服务的提供。