Healthcare at the Beginning of Life and Child Survival: Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment in Nigeria
Healthcare at the Beginning of Life and Child Survival: Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment in Nigeria
Monday, June 24, 2019: 1:45 PM
Jackson - Mezzanine Level (Marriott Wardman Park Hotel)
Discussant: Johabed Olvera Esquivel
Households in poor countries are encouraged (and sometimes coerced) to increase investments in formal health care during pregnancy and childbirth. Is this good policy? The answer to a large extent depends on its effects on child welfare. In this large-scale randomized trial designed to shed light on this question, households in Nigeria were randomly assigned to receive a cash transfer of $14 conditioned on uptake of a package of health services by pregnant women in the household or to a control group that received a small gift worth $0.43 for participating in the trial. We show that women in treated households were substantially more likely to use healthcare services. We then show that this led to a large and significant increase in child survival (about 7% relative to the control group mean). We explore causal mechanisms and present evidence suggesting that the key driver is prenatal health investments and not health care at birth.