Impacting Child Health:  Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers 

In this BBL we look at the Impact of Incentives on Health Worker Performance and Health outcomes in the Indian Context. 

In the first presentation Prakarsh Singh will detail his work on the effectiveness of using performance pay among government caregivers to improve child health outcomes. In a controlled study of 160 daycare centers serving over 4000 children, the team randomly assign workers to receive either fixed bonuses or payments based on the nutritional status of children in their care, and test for changes in child health relative to a control group where no bonuses are introduced. The team found that performance pay reduces the prevalence of weight-for-age malnutrition by about 5 percentage points over 3 months relative to control groups.

In the second presentation Thomas Bossuroy will share how they adapted the incentives structure of health workers, including through reinforced monitoring to improve Tubercoulosis (TB) outcomes. The team exploits the random placement of biometric devices recording TB patients’ adherence to treatment and health workers’ attendance at treatment centers in urban slums across four Indian states.  They found that patients seeking treatment in health centers equipped with a biometric monitoring device are 20% less likely to interrupt their treatment than those enrolled in a regular center. They also found that the use of biometric devices significantly reduces misreporting of performance by health workers. Biometric monitoring appears as a promising tool for strengthening today’s public-sector strategy for TB control.

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Breakfast will be served