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Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India

This paper tests the effectiveness of performance pay and bonuses among government childcare workers in India. In a controlled study of 160 ICDS centers serving over 4000 children, we randomly assign workers to either fixed bonuses or payments based on the nutritional status of children in their car...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Singh, Prakarsh, Masters, William A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier North Holland 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5597043/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28811120
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.07.005
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author Singh, Prakarsh
Masters, William A.
author_facet Singh, Prakarsh
Masters, William A.
author_sort Singh, Prakarsh
collection PubMed
description This paper tests the effectiveness of performance pay and bonuses among government childcare workers in India. In a controlled study of 160 ICDS centers serving over 4000 children, we randomly assign workers to either fixed bonuses or payments based on the nutritional status of children in their care, and also collect data from a control group receiving only standard salaries. In all three study arms mothers receive nutrition information. We find that performance pay reduces underweight prevalence by about 5 percentage points over 3 months, and height improves by about one centimeter. Impacts on weight continue when incentives are renewed and return to parallel trends thereafter. Fixed bonuses are less expensive but lead to smaller and less precisely estimated effects than performance pay, especially for children near malnutrition thresholds. Both treatments improve worker effort and communication with mothers, who in turn feed a more calorific diet to children at home.
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spelling pubmed-55970432017-09-21 Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India Singh, Prakarsh Masters, William A. J Health Econ Article This paper tests the effectiveness of performance pay and bonuses among government childcare workers in India. In a controlled study of 160 ICDS centers serving over 4000 children, we randomly assign workers to either fixed bonuses or payments based on the nutritional status of children in their care, and also collect data from a control group receiving only standard salaries. In all three study arms mothers receive nutrition information. We find that performance pay reduces underweight prevalence by about 5 percentage points over 3 months, and height improves by about one centimeter. Impacts on weight continue when incentives are renewed and return to parallel trends thereafter. Fixed bonuses are less expensive but lead to smaller and less precisely estimated effects than performance pay, especially for children near malnutrition thresholds. Both treatments improve worker effort and communication with mothers, who in turn feed a more calorific diet to children at home. Elsevier North Holland 2017-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5597043/ /pubmed/28811120 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.07.005 Text en © 2017 The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Singh, Prakarsh
Masters, William A.
Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India
title Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India
title_full Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India
title_fullStr Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India
title_full_unstemmed Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India
title_short Impact of caregiver incentives on child health: Evidence from an experiment with Anganwadi workers in India
title_sort impact of caregiver incentives on child health: evidence from an experiment with anganwadi workers in india
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5597043/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28811120
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.07.005
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